The Fate of ‘Big Government’ in the United States:Not Over,But Undermined?

Big government in the United States has never been as expansiveas the big state abroad. Whatever its scope, there is little evidence that the days of big government are numbered. Among both the public and organized interests there is at once antagonism toward big government and yet consistent support for many of the protections it affords, including those provided by the U.S. federal government's largest, and sure to get larger, social programs. The most important story is not the threat of a reduced state, but rather itstransformation. Continuing attempts to privatize its administration could put much of the big state, including its social programs, in the hands of big business.     

Forecasting Recidivism in Mentally Ill Offenders Released from Prison

Little research has focused on assessing the risk of mentally ill offenders (MIOs) released from state prisons. Here we report findings for 333 mentally ill offenders released from Washington State prisons. Logistic regression identified sets of variables that forecasted felony and violent reconviction as accurately as state-of-the-art risk assessment instruments. Sums of simple recoded versions of these variables predicted reoffense as well as complex logistic regression equations. Five of these 9 variables were found to be relative protective factors. Findings are discussed in terms of the value of stock correctional variables in forecasting risk, the need to base actuarial risk assessments on local data, the importance of protective factors in assessing MIO risk, and the need for dynamic, situational, and clinical variables that can further sharpen predictive accuracy of emergent risk in the community.     

Participation in a national,means‐tested school voucher program

We use data from a sample of applicants to a national means‐tested school voucher program and a national sample of the population eligible for the program to evaluate the factors leading families to use school vouchers. Our analysis divides the process of voucher usage into two distinct stages: initial application and subsequent take‐up. Using a nested logit model, we find that some factors, like religious affiliation and religious service attendance, affect both stages. Others, like mother's education, affect only one (application). Still others, like ethnicity, have opposite effects at the two stages. Compared to Whites, minorities are more likely to apply for vouchers, but less likely to take them when given the opportunity. © 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

PUBLIC OPINION REACTION TO REPEATED EVENTS: Citizen Response to Multiple Supreme Court Abortion Decisions

While numerous works explores how single events or political actions affect public opinion, almost no research explores how this effect evolves with repeated actions. The Conditional Response Model holds that while elite actors can influence and polarize the public when they first act on an issue, subsequent action will not have this same effect. We challenge this model based on its depiction of psychological models of attitude formation and change. Instead of focusing on the number of times an actor has addressed an issue, we argue that the state of public opinion is the key to determining how the public will react to multiple elite actions over a long timeframe. We examine how the public reacted to multiple Supreme Court decisions on abortion. Our results suggest that the Conditional Response Model does a poor job of depicting public opinion and that actors are not limited in their influence by the number of previous actions on an issue.     

Interviewing Preschoolers: Comparisons Of Yes/No and Wh- Questions

This study investigated the influence of question format on preschool-aged children's errors, their response accuracy, and their tendency to say I don't know when given non-misleading questions in a neutral, unbiased context. Children (3 to 5 years old) participated in a craft-making session that included a staged accident with two experimenters differing in gender and appearance; the environment also had several distinctive features. One week later children were interviewed about actions, participants, and environment; questions were yes/no format with the veridical response yes (yes questions), yes/no format with the veridical response no (no questions), and specific wh- format questions. Question format substantially influenced children's responses: they were most likely to make errors if asked no questions, and were unlikely to answer either yes/no question with I don't know. In contrast, children spontaneously and frequently said I don't know to wh- questions about content they did not recall (environment), but not about content that was well recalled (actions). Implications of question format for reliability of eyewitness testimony by preschoolers are discussed.