Neighborhood immigrant concentration and violent crime reporting to the police: A multilevel analysis of data from the National Crime Victimization Survey*

Using data from the Area‐Identified National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), we provide a national assessment of the impact of neighborhood immigrant concentration on whether violence is reported to the police. By drawing on multiple theoretical perspectives, we outline how the level of violence reporting could be higher or lower in immigrant neighborhoods, as well as how this may depend on individual race/ethnicity and the history of immigration in the county in which immigrant neighborhoods are located. Controlling for both individual‐ and neighborhood‐level conditions, our findings indicate that within traditional immigrant counties, rates of violence reporting in immigrant neighborhoods are similar to those observed elsewhere. In contrast, within newer immigrant destinations, we observe much lower rates of violence reporting in neighborhoods with a large concentration of immigrants. Our study findings reveal comparable patterns for Whites, Blacks, and Latinos. The results have important implications for theory, policy, and future research.     

Psychological threat and turnout misreporting

Direct survey measures of turnout often suffer from misreporting, particularly among non-voters. We investigate whether turnout misreporting in online surveys can be reduced by two new turnout question designs aimed at strengthening or buffering respondent's self-integrity against the perceived psychological threat of admitting non-voting. Drawing on evidence from survey experiments embedded in vote validated online surveys after the 2016 UK EU Referendum, we find that neither technique significantly improves turnout reporting accuracy. Our findings inform innovations in survey measurement of turnout and sensitive survey topics more generally.     

公民法律意识的量表测量:一个基于调查数据的分析

法律意识是关于社会与法律之间关系研究的一个重要领域,虽然国内外在这方面的研究已有较长的历史,但法律意识的标准化的量表测量技术一直未受到重视,我国学术界最近涌现的大量关于法律意识的实证研究也显示出在调查方法上的欠缺。本文借鉴环境意识测量研究的经验,利用所收集的农民法律意识调查数据对建立法律意识量表体系进行了尝试,其结果证明了这种研究方法的可行性。文章同时提出了法律意识量表体系设计的基本框架,并简要论述了该测量方法对今后研究发展和政策制定的指导意义。     

Values and candidate evaluation: How voters respond to allegations of sexual harassment

How do voters respond to candidates accused of sexual harassment? The literature on political scandals demonstrates that candidate characteristics, scandal type, and voter characteristics matter; as well as party affiliation. However, empirical evidence suggests that not all co-partisans react the same way. Why is this the case? Our study uses Schwartz's (1996) theory of values to hypothesise that voters prioritising ‘universalism’ and ‘benevolence’ are less likely to vote for candidates accused of sexual harassment compared to voters who prioritise ‘self-enhancement’ values. Using an original, mixed methods, online survey experiment (n = 704), we show that American voters do become less favourable towards candidates linked to allegations of sexual harassment; but a sizeable minority would nevertheless vote for a co-partisan candidate accused of sexual harassment. Values are an important mechanism to explain this heterogeneity. Qualitative data corroborates our findings, and helps explain why sexual harassment allegations are not always a barrier to electoral success.     

How representative are referendums? Evidence from 20 years of Swiss referendums

Direct democracy allows citizens to reverse decisions made by legislatures and even initiate new laws which parliaments are unwilling to pass, thereby, as its proponents argue, leading to more representative policies than would have obtained under a purely representative democracy. Yet, turnout in referendums is usually lower than in parliamentary elections and tends to be skewed towards citizens of high socio-economic status. Consequently, critics of direct democracy argue that referendum outcomes may not be representative of the preferences of the population at large. We test this assertion using a compilation of post-referendum surveys encompassing 148 national referendums held in Switzerland between 1981 and 1999. Uniquely, these surveys also asked non-voters about their opinion on the referendum's subject. Comparing opinion majorities in the surveys against actual referendum outcomes we show that representativeness increases slightly in turnout as well as over time. However, we find only few cases where the outcome would have been more representative even under full turnout vis-a vis a counterfactual representative outcome. Thus, our results are in line with research on the turnout effect in elections: Higher turnout would not radically change the outcome of votes. On balance we find more cases where referendums provided more representative outcomes than cases where the outcome was unrepresentative vis-a-vis representative democracy. Hence, we conclude that, overall, direct democracy seems to improve representation in Switzerland.     

It’s Good but Is It Right? An Under-the-Hood View of the Location Affordability Index

In 2012, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released the Location Affordability Index (LAI) as an online portal and downloadable data set. The LAI has elevated the U.S. conversation on affordability to include transportation and access to opportunities, and has been used in state and federal programming, by researchers, and by private households. However, although some researchers have noted concerns with and potential limitations of the data, none has provided practitioners and researchers with an under-the-hood view of the data, analysis of its reliability or validity, or its conceptual limitations. This article recommends methodological improvements dealing with issues of variable construction, aggregation, and modeling. A recreation of the LAI at the census-tract level suggests the LAI overestimates both costs and cost burden, but especially among renters, and especially in metropolitan areas. On the transportation side, model recreation requires partnership and resourcing to both gain access to restricted data and to develop a reliable database on transit supply and use.     

Was there a ‘Youthquake’ in the 2017 general election?

Studies using data from the British Election Study and the British Social Attitudes survey have concluded that the case for a significant rise in turnout amongst young people at the 2017 general election remains unproven. A limitation of these data sets for assessing the so-called Youthquake thesis is the small number of younger voters they contain. In this research note we use data from the UK Household Longitudinal Survey to produce more robust estimates of turnout amongst people aged under thirty between the 2010, 2015, and 2017 general elections. Our findings support the claim that turnout increased markedly among voters in this age group in 2017. They also demonstrate that the increase in youth turnout was not specific to 2017 but, rather, represented a continuation of a change between 2010 and 2015. Our analysis confirms the heightened importance of age as a predictor of vote choice in 2017, with younger voters significantly more likely to vote Labour compared to 2010 and 2015.     

肝豆状核变性患者生命质量与中医证型的相关性研究

目的 探究肝豆状核变性（Wilsons disease,WD）患者生命质量的主要影响因素及其与中医证型的关系。方法 运用SF-36量表、抑郁自评量表（self-rating depression scale,SDS）调查186例WD患者的生命质量和情绪状况,并比较不同证型WD患者及参照人群SF-36量表各维度评分的差异;运用Pearson和Spearman相关分析及多元线性逐步回归研究SF-36量表各维度评分与各影响因素（包括患者性别、文化程度、居住地、病程等）的关系。结果 除精神健康维度外,男性WD患者其余7个维度评分显著低于男性参照人群（P＜0.01）;女性WD患者所有维度评分均显著低于女性参照人群（P＜0.01）。影响患者生命质量的因素较多,其中病程、费用支出方式、SDS评分对患者SF-36量表多个维度评分都呈负面影响。不同中医证型WD患者的生理功能、生理职能、社会功能、情感职能评分均显著低于参照人群（P<0.05,或P<0.01）;痰瘀互结型和肝肾阴虚型患者躯体疼痛评分显著低于痰湿中阻型（P＜0.01）,脾肾阳虚型患者的活力评分显著低于肝气郁结型（P＜0.05）,肝气郁结型患者的情感职能评分显著低于痰瘀互结型（P＜0.05）。结论 WD患者生命质量较正常人明显降低,不同证型患者的生命质量存在差异,对WD患者应早诊断、早治疗,加强农村患者的医疗保障。     

Attention! The meanings of attention to politics in surveys

This research note explores the role of reported attention to politics in survey overclaiming about politics. Using recognition of real and fictitious political parties in the context of the UK's 2019 European Parliament elections, we find that people who report higher attention to politics are more likely to over-report recognition of fictitious parties, and are also more likely to recognize new real political parties - those that emerged around the issue of ‘Brexit’ in the months before the election. To resolve these patterns, we show that political attention makes little difference to the accuracy of responses for people who have high political knowledge, or if it does so, it increases accuracy. However, for those with lower political knowledge, high reported political attention is a source of potential survey error and bias. These findings are consistent with higher survey satisficing and norm compliance among those who report having greater attention to politics, particularly among those who have lower knowledge. The implications are important for understanding the meaning and consequences of ‘attention to politics’ in surveys.     

Measuring Exposure to Political Advertising in Surveys

Research on the influence of negative political advertising in America is characterized by fundamentally conflicting findings. In recent years, however, survey research using estimates of exposure based on a combination of self-reported television viewing habits and Campaign Media Analysis Group data (a database of all advertisements broadcast on national and cable television in the top 75 media markets) has argued that exposure to negative political advertising boosts interest in the campaign and turnout. This paper examines the measurement properties of self-reports of television viewing. I argue that the errors from common survey formats may both be nonrandom and larger than previously acknowledged. The nonrandom error is due to the tendency of politically knowledgeable individuals to be more sensitive to question format. Thus the inferences drawn about the relationship between political knowledge, exposure to negative ads, and political behavior are also sensitive to the measures used to estimate exposure. I demonstrate, however, that one commonly used measure of exposure—the log of estimated exposure—is not only more theoretically defensible but also alleviates some of the more serious problems due to measurement error.