Contextual Effects on Retrospective Economic Evaluations The Impact of the State and Local Economy

The theoretical premise of this study is that individual retrospective evaluations of the national economy, which have a clear impact on voting behavior in national elections, are influenced not only by the national economy but also by the state and local economic context. This hypothesis is tested by analyzing the effect that the unemployment rate in the individual's state and community has on the individual's retrospective evaluation of the national unemployment situation in 1992, using data from the 1992 American National Election Study survey, supplemented with data on the unemployment rate during the third quarter of 1992 for the respondent's community and state. The findings show that the state unemployment rate has a clear effect on retrospective evaluations of national economic conditions. This effect occurs apart from any effect on fear of unemployment, which is unaffected by the state unemployment rate. The community unemployment rate has little or no effect on retrospective economic evaluations, except for a small impact on personal unemployment experience. The contextual effect that we observe therefore is primarily sociotropic, not personal pocketbook, in nature. We suggest that the contextual patterning of information, perhaps especially through media reporting of economic conditions, is responsible for producing this effect.     

我院政法职业教育特色数据库的开发与建设

职业法学教育是我国高等法学教育体系的重要组成部分.数据库是信息资源开发的基础.本文从政法高等职业教育的角度论述了开发特色数据库的意义和重要性;对学院现有数据库的开发、建设、数据采集、资源整合等进行了较详细的论述.最后提出了在数据库建设过程中应注意的几个问题.