POLSCI 240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Regression Analysis
10 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Political Psychology
9.14.16 Lecture Notes – Preferences and Constraints
Regression model of knowledge
o Somewhat same key predictors of political knowledge are the same as political
participation
▪ Education, income, and age
o Adding non-resource factors, such as political interest, also matters
o Education is most important determinant
Changes over time in the US
o We don’t have a ton of great data on but:
o Little evidence for substantial increases in knowledge
▪ Educational attainment has increased, so this is quite surprising
▪ Perhaps because of a growth in the STEM field or maybe a decrease in political
science/public policy majors in education
▪ Distrust in government has also been increasing
o This is despite the massive increase in educational attainment over time
The role of institutions: inequality, education, and knowledge
o How important is education to political knowledge in country?
o Countries with better redistribution systems and/or social welfare may affect political
participation of people of lower SES
o As country-wide inequality goes up, the gap in high and low political knowledge also goes
up
o Institutions matter in determining the gap in political knowledge among people in that
country
The role of media
o Who benefits most from media coverage of issues?
o Are there certain forms of media coverage that exacerbate or decrease SES inequalities in
knowledge?
o What are the implications of new forms of media?
Information rich environment v. information poor environments
o The information-rich gets richer
o How dense is the coverage of a certain issue by the media?
o Educated people are generally more informed of surveillance knowledge of politics
▪ When the media pays more attention to those issues, the educated get more
information
▪ Cognitive ability allows them to process media stories in a more complex way
▪ Increasing amounts of information benefit educated people more
▪ In other words, the gap grows
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Regression model of knowledge: somewhat same key predictors of political knowledge are the same as political participation, education, income, and age, adding non-resource factors, such as political interest, also matters, education is most important determinant. Increasing amounts of information benefit educated people more. The idea that (cid:498)information-rich get richer(cid:499) is more applicable to newspapers than television. The use of (cid:498)expert(cid:499) commentators and contextualized political stories have both increased over. As we move from low levels of expert commentary to high levels of expert commentary, the gap increases. As we move from low levels of contextual coverage to high levels of contextual coverage, there are larger gains for the uneducated relative to the educated. Two major changes: from mainly newspapers and radio to television dominance, from low-choice (broadcast tv) to high-choice (cable tv and internet) Types of interdependence and constraint: logical: constraint due to objective features of the world and the rules of logic citizens.
