Many Americans’ racially and partisan motivated dislike forObama means they doubt his legitimacy as president

For much of Barack Obama’s presidential run and his subsequent two terms as president he has been dogged by accusations that he was not born in the US, and is therefore ineligible to be president. In order to explain the continuing prevalence of this view, despite the evidence to the contrary, Josh Pasek looks at whether or not such ‘birthers’ are motivated by partisanship of racial prejudice. They find that while on the surface the ‘birther’ view is motivated by party ideology and racism, such views actually lead people to dislike President Obama, and thus leaves them more open to accepting claims that he was not born in the US

Identifying Best Practices in Civic Education: Lessons From the Student Voices Program

School‐based civic education is increasingly recognized as an effective means for increasing political awareness and participation in American youth. This study examines the Student Voices curriculum, implemented in 22 Philadelphia high schools, to assess program activities that mediate gains in outcomes linked to future political participation (following of politics, political knowledge, and political efficacy). The results indicate that class deliberative discussions, community projects, and informational use of the Internet produce favorable outcomes that build over the course of two semesters. Effects were comparable for both white and nonwhite students

Misinformed About the Affordable Care Act? Leveraging Certainty to Assess the Prevalence of Misperceptions

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112231/1/jcom12165.pd

Racial Attitudes Predicted Changes in Ostensibly Race‐Neutral Political Attitudes Under the Obama Administration

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136427/1/pops12315_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136427/2/pops12315.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136427/3/pops12315-sup-0001-suppinfo01.pd

Americans’ Attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act: What Role Do Beliefs Play?

How do people form their attitudes toward complex policy issues? Although there has long been an assumption that people consider the various components of those issues and come to an overall assessment, a growing body of recent work has instead suggested that people may reach summary judgments as a function of heuristic cues and goal-oriented rationalizations. This study examines how well a component-based model fits Americans’ evaluations of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, an important and highly contentious piece of legislation that contained several constituent parts. Despite strong partisan disagreement about the law, we find that Democrats and Republicans both appear to evaluate the law as a function of their beliefs and what the law would do as well as their confidence in those beliefs. This finding implies that correcting misperceptions and increasing awareness of the components of legislation have the potential to change attitudes

The Effects of Home Computers on Educational Outcomes: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Schoolchildren

Are home computers are an important input in the educational production function? To address this question, we conduct a field experiment involving the provision of free computers to schoolchildren for home use. Low-income children attending middle and high schools in 15 schools in California were randomly selected to receive free computers and followed over the school year. The results indicate that the experiment substantially increased computer ownership and total computer use among the schoolchildren with no substitution away from use at school or other locations outside the home. We find no evidence that the home computers improved educational outcomes for the treatment group. From detailed administrative data provided by the schools and a follow-up survey, we find no evidence of positive effects on a comprehensive set of outcomes such as grades, test scores, credits, attendance, school enrollment, computer skills, and college aspirations. The estimates also do not indicate that the effects of home computers on educational outcomes are instead negative. Our estimates are precise enough to rule out even modestly-sized positive or negative impacts. The lack of a positive net effect on educational outcomes may be due to displacement from non-educational uses such as for games, social networking, and entertainment. We find evidence that total hours of computer use for games and social networking increases substantially with having a home computer, and increases more than total hours of computer use for schoolwork

Writing the Empirical Social Science Research Paper: A Guide for the Perplexed

Students sometimes find the general process of writing an empirical research paper to be daunting. Yet, when the process is approached in a systematic way, students can become more comfortable with the writing and standard formatting used in an empirical article. Accordingly, the current paper serves as a template for the budding social scientist. In it, I describe the various sections of a research paper in order to illustrate the structure of an introduction, methods section, results section, and discussion section in a format fitting for the 6th edition of the American Psychological Association. As in most empirical research papers, the first section is an abstract, a short outline of the paper that clarifies both what the paper will be examining, what is found, and in most cases a one line explanation of why the findings are important to the field. Accordingly, this paper should help to clarify the process of producing an empirical article