Jackie (and Jill) Robinson in the Statehouse: Gender and Educational Attainment Influences on Office-Holding and Leadership Positions in the U.S. States

While legislative gender disparity has declined over the past few decades, gender imbalance has continued to be a stubborn fact of representative democracy in the United States. This divide persists even though females have caught up in terms of the historical educational gap. These societal shifts have been significant, however little time has been devoted to analysis of legislator education levels and none to the relationship with gender in the extant literature. This paper seeks to fill that gap, looking at the intersection through the lens of one of the prevailing theories of the expectations of female candidates and legislators

The impact of education on legislative responsiveness in three field experiments

Three field experiments were used to investigate whether a constituent’s education level influences state legislators’ responsiveness to their request for assistance. Legislators were sent emails that were randomly varied as to the education level of the writer. Results indicate that communication from constituents with lower education levels receive fewer replies. Two potential explanations for the variation in legislative response are explored—political party and the legislator’s own education level. Analysis suggests that neither of these variables account for the response differential to the email manipulations

Voting at Home Is Associated with Lower Cortisol than Voting at the Polls

Previous research finds that voting is a socially stressful activity associated with increases in cortisol levels. Here we extend this research by investigating whether different voting modalities have differential effects on the stress response to voting. Results from a field experiment conducted during the 2012 presidential elections strongly suggest that traditional “at the polls” voting is more stressful, as measured by increases in cortisol levels, than voting at home by mail-in ballot or engaging in comparable non-political social activities. These findings imply that increased low-stress voting options such as mail-in ballots may increase political participation among individuals who are sensitive to social stressors

Disproportional Representation: A Mixed Methods Analysis of Educational Attainment Representation in State Government

The present dissertation examines unequal political representation in the United States. More specifically, I ask whether American citizens with low relative levels of education are under-represented by their state governments compared to their well-educated counterparts. I posit that this question is vital to our understanding of the quality of democracy in America. In order to answer the primary question, I take a mixed-methods approach, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data to obtain a clearer picture of the representation scene. In the quantitative chapters, I demonstrate that in terms of both service responsiveness and policy responsiveness, those individuals with less education are not being appropriately represented. Additionally, I interviewed legislators from around the country to gain insight into how they perceive their representativeness. This adds depth and a more personal angle to the quantitative studies. I take additional steps to examine wither the education levels of the legislators themselves affects their representation of less-educated constituents. Not only is legislator education an area that has not been often studied, I use an original data set of state legislator educational attainment that provides the most extensive look at this topic that, to my knowledge, has ever been conducted. Finally, I conclude by relating this work back to that on state politics and inequality and by highlighting a series of policy recommendations addressing issues in civic education and participation, and the weighting of citizen political interests in the policymaking process. Advisor: Kevin B. Smit

The impact of education on legislative responsiveness in three field experiments

Three field experiments were used to investigate whether a constituent’s education level influences state legislators’ responsiveness to their request for assistance. Legislators were sent emails that were randomly varied as to the education level of the writer. Results indicate that communication from constituents with lower education levels receive fewer replies. Two potential explanations for the variation in legislative response are explored—political party and the legislator’s own education level. Analysis suggests that neither of these variables account for the response differential to the email manipulations

Voting at Home Is Associated with Lower Cortisol than Voting at the Polls

Previous research finds that voting is a socially stressful activity associated with increases in cortisol levels. Here we extend this research by investigating whether different voting modalities have differential effects on the stress response to voting. Results from a field experiment conducted during the 2012 presidential elections strongly suggest that traditional “at the polls” voting is more stressful, as measured by increases in cortisol levels, than voting at home by mail-in ballot or engaging in comparable non-political social activities. These findings imply that increased low-stress voting options such as mail-in ballots may increase political participation among individuals who are sensitive to social stressors

The Varieties of Individual Engagement (VIE) Scales: Confirmatory Factor Analyses across Two Samples and Contexts

The field of public engagement, participation and deliberation is fraught with conflicting results that are difficult to interpret due to the very different methods and measures used. Theory advancement and consistent operationalization and assessment of key public deliberation and engagement variables will benefit considerably from standardized measures of constructs and the ability to compare across studies. In this article, drawing from social and educational psychology, we describe the theoretical bases for scales assessing eight varieties of participant engagement that may be experienced during participation activities: Active learning, conscientious, uninterested, creative, open-minded, closed-minded, angry, and social engagement. We describe our development of scales to measure these varieties of engagement, and results from three confirmatory factor analyses across two very different populations (college students and city residents) and three different engagement activities (reading background information, deliberating about ethical scenarios, completing an online survey). Finally, we examine evidence of the convergent and divergent validity of the scales by examining their relationships with each other and theoretically-relevant individual and situational characteristics. Findings indicate the scales have good psychometric properties and show evidence of construct validity. We discuss how these scales might be used in reflective practice and research, and identify questions that public engagement researchers and practitioners will find useful in their work

Boletín Oficial de la Provincia de Guadalajara: Número 90 - 1943 abril 15

Prior research finds that liberals and conservatives process information differently. Predispositions toward intuitive versus reflective thinking may help explain this individual level variation. There have been few direct tests of this hypothesis and the results from the handful of studies that do exist are contradictory. Here we report the results of a series of studies using the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) to investigate inclinations to be reflective and political orientation. We find a relationship between thinking style and political orientation and that these effects are particularly concentrated on social attitudes. We also find it harder to manipulate intuitive and reflective thinking than a number of prominent studies suggest. Priming manipulations used to induce reflection and intuition in published articles repeatedly fail in our studies. We conclude that conservatives— more specifically, social conservatives—tend to be dispositionally less reflective, social liberals tend to be dispositionally more reflective, and that the relationship between reflection and intuition and political attitudes may be more resistant to easy manipulation than existing research would suggest. Supplementary and data files attached below

Estimates of Cortisol Level Change by Experimental Condition.

<p>*p <. 05, unstandardized coefficients (standard errors) reported</p><p>Estimates of Cortisol Level Change by Experimental Condition.</p