Correcting for Survey Misreports Using Auxiliary Information with an Application to Estimating Turnout

Misreporting is a problem that plagues researchers who use survey data. In this article, we develop a parametric model that corrects for misclassified binary responses using information on the misreporting patterns obtained from auxiliary data sources. The model is implemented within the Bayesian framework via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods and can be easily extended to address other problems exhibited by survey data, such as missing response and/or covariate values. While the model is fully general, we illustrate its application in the context of estimating models of turnout using data from the American National Elections Studies.     

Autonomy-related Parenting Processes and Adolescent Adjustment in Latinx Immigrant Families

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - It is unclear how autonomy-related parenting processes are associated with Latinx adolescent adjustment. This study uses Latent Profile Analysis to identify...     

Face Value? Experimental Evidence that Candidate Appearance Influences Electoral Choice

According to numerous studies, candidates’ looks predict voters’ choices—a finding that raises concerns about voter competence and about the quality of elected officials. This potentially worrisome finding, however, is observational and therefore vulnerable to alternative explanations. To better test the appearance effect, we conducted two experiments. Just before primary and general elections for various offices, we randomly assigned voters to receive ballots with and without candidate photos. Simply showing voters these pictures increased the vote for appearance-advantaged candidates. Experimental evidence therefore supports the view that candidates’ looks could influence some voters. In general elections, we find that high-knowledge voters appear immune to this influence, while low-knowledge voters use appearance as a low-information heuristic. In primaries, however, candidate appearance influences even high-knowledge and strongly partisan voters.     

Applying Social Cognitive Theory to Explore Relational Aggression across Early Adolescence: A Within- and Between-Person Analysis

In the past two decades, there has been a significant amount of research on children’s relational aggression, which has been found to be associated with psychosocial problems. Longitudinal studies have examined changes in relational aggression during early adolescence in relation to individual characteristics; however, most studies compare individual differences between people with regard to rates of relational aggression. A shortcoming to the current literature is the lack of studies that use a multilevel approach to examine individual differences (between-person) as well as the extent to which individuals deviate from their own typical levels (within-person) over time. In this study, within- and between-person psychological and peer-related predictors of rates of relational aggression over time were examined. Participants included 1,655 students in 5th–8th grade (mean age: 13.01) from four public middle schools in the Midwest, which consisted 828 females and 827 males. In terms of race and ethnicity, 819 (49.5%) were African Americans, followed by 571 (34.5%) Whites, and 265 (16%) Others. Longitudinal data were collected over four waves across two years of middle school. The findings indicated that contrary to the hypothesis that relational aggression would increase over time, there was no significant growth across time. Age, gender, and race were not associated with relational aggression over time; however, consistent with the Social Cognitive Theory, changes in within-person impulsivity, anger, and peer delinquency were all positively related to increases in relational aggression. At the between-person level of analysis, depressive symptoms and peer delinquency were related to relational aggression. Findings suggest that school-based programs that address anger management, impulsivity, empathy, and victimization could help prevent relational aggression.     

Going Dark: Terrorism on the Dark Web

The terms Deep Web, Deep Net, Invisible Web, or Dark Web refer to the content on the World Wide Web that is not indexed by standard search engines. One can describe the Internet as composed of layers: the “upper” layer, or the Surface Web, can easily be accessed by regular searches. However, “deeper” layers, the content of the Deep Web, have not been indexed by traditional search engines such as Google. Michael K. Bergman who wrote the seminal paper on the Deep Web, compared searching the Internet to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is deeper and therefore missed. In fact, most of the Web's information is buried far down on sites, and standard search engines are unable to access it.     

Paradigm shift: motivations for qualified legal professionals to undertake academic study

This paper considers the factors that motivate qualified legal professionals to undertake a further legal academic programme of study. The paper analyses the findings of a recent study concerning a post-graduate research degree collaboration between Northumbria University (NU) and the Law Society of Ireland (LSI) whereby NU’s longstanding LLM Advanced Legal Practice (LLM ALP) has been offered in Ireland through the LSI (LLM ALP (Ire)). The initial offering of the LLM ALP (Ire) has attracted a significant amount of interest from the profession, prompting the authors to consider (i) the factors that motivate ‘time-poor’ professionals to pursue the academic study of law at the post-professional level and (ii) the potential that such a course of study might have to inform and enrich the students’ practice of law. The LLM ALP (Ire) has attracted a significant amount of more established practitioners, whereas those who generally enrol on the LLM ALP in England are at the early stages of their careers, either enrolled on the Legal Practice Course (LPC) or having only recently qualified. Hence this research is focused on a particular student profile of post-professionals with established careers in legal practice.     

Applying the Notion of Noise to Countering Online Terrorism

The growing presence of modern terrorism on the Internet is at the nexus of two key trends: the democratization of communications driven by user-generated content on the Internet; and the growing awareness of modern terrorists of the potential of the Internet for their purposes. How best can the terrorists’ use and abuse of the Internet be countered? As this article argues, the answer to violent radicalization on the Internet lies not in censorship of the Internet, but in a more sophisticated and complicated strategy, relying on the theoretical notion of “noise” in communication process theory.     

Releasing Constraints to Growth or Pushing on a String? Policies and Performance of Mexican Micro-Firms

Using firm-level data from Mexico, this paper investigates the firm characteristics associated with participation in credit markets, access to training, tax payments and membership in business associations. We find that firms which participate in these institutions exhibit significantly higher profits. Moreover, firms that borrow from formal or informal sources and those that pay taxes are significantly more likely to stay in business but firms that received credit exhibit lower rates of income growth. These results persist when firm characteristics that are arguably correlated with unobserved entrepreneurial ability are controlled for. Our findings suggest that the significant within-country differences in firm productivity observed in developing economies are due in part to market and government failures that limit the ability of micro-firms to reach their optimal sizes.