Asked and Answered: Knowledge Levels When We Will Not Take “Don't Know” for an Answer

A pivotal claim in research on citizen competence is that the typical citizen knows very little about politics. Public opinion surveys provide a considerable body of evidence in support of this position. However, survey protocols with respect to factual questions about politics violate established norms in psychometric research on educational testing in that don't know answers are encouraged rather than discouraged. Because encouraging don't know responses potentially confounds efforts to identify substantive understanding, this practice may lead to the systematic understatement of political knowledge. We explore this possibility with data drawn from three split-ballot tests: one conducted as part of a survey in the Tallahassee, Florida, metropolitan area, one conducted as part of the 1998 NES Pilot, and one conducted as part of the 2000 NES. Results reveal that the mean level of political knowledge increases by approximately 15% when knowledge questions are asked in accordance with accepted practices in educational testing.     

Exploring black political intolerance

Forty years of research in political tolerance has produced only tangential evidence of blacks' commitment to the principles of democracy and their willingness to apply them to specific situations. Implicit in this literature is that blacks' socialization into a rigid culture stressing authoritarian values, low levels of education, and certain psychological deficiencies interfere with the acquisition of democratic values. As a result, black intolerance is accepted as uncontrollable and involuntary. In this paper, I challenge this view of black intolerance. In particular, I consider how black political intolerance is used as an emancipatory strategy to protect blacks from groups who directly threaten their physical and psychological security. The analysis reveals that blacks identify the historical and current attempt of the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize and demean them, and thus, attempt to restrain its behavior. Black intolerance is a conscious and focused decision that allows blacks to distinguish between everyday racists and bigots, and the anxiety and fear generated by the Klan.