1

Paper

Age-Period-Cohort Analysis with Noisy, Lumpy Data Brady, Henry E. Elms, Laurel Uploaded 07-14-1999 Keywords cohort analysis smoothing political participation Abstract We have developed several relatively simple methods for doing age-period-cohort analysis with noisy, lumpy data. The first method, using additional information from the Census, does not work well with our data constraints because the age composition of the population does not vary enough over relatively short periods of time. The second method, approximating APC surfaces with polynomial functions, smooths the data too much. This approach is very much a brute force curve-fitting exercise that makes a very general assumption about the functional form of the APC surface and then fits it to the data. However, a third technique we evaluate starts with a theoretically informed model of how APC effects operate for a given dependent variable. This method allows for hypothesis testing and a reasonable amount of smoothing, but probably does not smooth period effects enough. It also yields interesting results about age, period, and cohort effects. The last method we discuss briefly, combining the third technique with additional smoothing, needs more development but may improve our estimates.

2

Paper

Non-Compulsory Voting in Australia?: what surveys can (and can't) tell us Jackman, Simon Uploaded 08-25-1997 Keywords turnout Australian politics compulsory voting political participation counter-factuals surveys non-response measurement error social-desirability heuristic question-order effects simulation parametric bootstrap Abstract Compulsory voting has come under close scrutiny in recent Australian political debate, and influential voices within the (conservative) Coalition government have called for its repeal. Conventional wisdom holds that a repeal of compulsory voting would result in a sizeable electoral boost for the Coalition; the proportion of Coalition voters who would not vote is thought to be smaller than the corresponding proportion of Labor voters. But estimates of Coalition gains under a return to voluntary turnout are quite rough-and-ready, relying on methods hampered by critical shortcomings. In this paper I focus on assessing the counter-factual of non-compulsory turnout via surveys: while turnout is compulsory in Australia, responding to surveys isn't, and the problems raised by high rates of non-response are especially pernicious in attempting to assess the counter-factual of voluntary turnout. Among survey respondents, social-desirability and question-order effects also encourage over-reports of the likelihood of voluntarily turning out. Taking non-response and measurement error into consideration, I conclude that survey-based estimates (a) significantly emph{under-estimate} the extent to which turnout would emph{decline} under a voluntary turnout regime; but (b) emph{over-estimate} the extent to which a fall in turnout would work to the advantage of the Coalition parties. Nonetheless, the larger of the Coalition parties --- the Liberal Party --- unambiguously increases its vote share under a wide range of assumptions about who does and doesn't voluntarily turnout.

3

Paper

Measuring the Effects of Voter Confidence on Political Participation Levin, Ines Alvarez, R. Michael Uploaded 06-22-2009 Keywords voter confidence turnout participation mexico matching causal effects Abstract In this paper we study the causal effect of voter confidence on participation decisions in the 2006 Mexican Election. Previous research has shown that voter confidence was a relevant factor in explaining participation during the years of the PRI hegemony. An open question is whether this relationship is still significant after the democratic transition taking place in the years 1997-2000. Moreover, in the previous literature, this problem was studied in a regression framework. In this article we argue that, since voter confidence and participation decisions are affected by similar covariates, a regression approach may lead to results which are too model dependent, and do not account for the heterogeneity of effects across voters. To solve this problem, we use matching methods, and find that voter confidence has considerable effects on participation decisions, but substantially different in magnitude from those found using the usual regression approach.

4

Poster

Estimating the Effects of Unemployment on Voter Turnout Incantalupo, Matthew Uploaded 08-01-2011 Keywords design-based inference causal inference voting participation turnout unemployment inequality Abstract Unemployed Americans face numerous hardships: lost income, financial uncertainty, family struggles, strained or broken social ties, and issues with both mental and physical health. Job loss is a profound personal experience, but unlike many other consequences of hard economic times, it has not been strongly linked to changes in political behavior. In this study, I identify a causal link between involuntary job loss and reported voter turnout in recent elections. Under low unemployment, job loss has a negative effect on voter turnout. During a period of high unemployment, such as the one caused by the current economic recession, job loss has a positive effect on voter turnout.

5

Poster

Hookworm Eradication as an Instrument for Schooling in the American South Henderson, John Uploaded 08-01-2011 Keywords hookworm education participation rockefeller sanitary commission instrumental variables matching permutation inference sensitivity analysis Abstract I exploit an historical natural experiment to assess whether more schooling causes greater vote participation. Specifically, I leverage the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission’s campaign to eradicate hookworm infection in the early-20th century American South as a plausibly-exogenous instrument for primary and secondary education. I evaluate two county-level interventions from the public health campaign: (a) exposure to the campaign and (b) pre-campaign hookworm incidence. Due to the presence of possible confounders, I use pair (genetic) and dose (optimal) matching techniques to strengthen the exogeneity of both instruments. I then use Rosenbaum permutation inference to assess the inclusion strength of the campaign exposure instrument, and I employ a simultaneous sensitivity analysis to evaluate robustness to remaining bias. Throughout, I find a robust and positive effect of education on participation.

6

Poster

Beyond Voting: A Generalized Model of Political Participation Levin, Ines Uploaded 07-23-2010 Keywords political participation latent class analysis finite mixture modeling random utility models scobit Abstract For decades political scientists have studied the motives underlying individual engagement in political activities, but the field still lacks a comprehensive study taking into account the commonalities between different forms of political engagement. It is likely that some of the factors that affect the decision to vote also affect the choice of working for a campaign or donating money, as well as engagement in other political endeavors. In this paper I construct a model that allows measuring how observed individual attributes influence decisions to participate specific activities, as well as identifying common patterns of behavior across different form of activism. Most importantly, since empirical models cannot possibly account for all factors affecting participation decisions, and since other factors are likely to follow heterogeneous distributions across the population, I develop a generalized specification where respondents are classified into classes with lower or greater propensities toward civic voluntarism depending on the distribution of unobserved attributes. If underlying heterogeneities have considerable effects on propensities toward participation, learning about these heterogeneities is important for gaining a better understanding of how well activists and elected candidates represent diverse constituencies, and is also useful for the design of mobilization campaigns. I applied this model to survey data collected during the 2008 electoral period and found that while a relatively small proportion of individuals exhibited high propensity toward participation and were fairly sensitive to variations in variables such as education attainment, most respondents were assigned to a group with low tendencies toward activism and low sensitivity to changes in observable attributes.

7

Poster

A New Approach to the Study of Political Participation Levin, Ines Uploaded 07-26-2011 Keywords political participation mixture modeling Abstract In this poster I present a new statistical procedure for the study of political participation based on mixture modeling and simultaneous consideration of involvement in multiple political activities. In this model, the relationship between underlying utilities and participation probabilities is regulated by a parameter that captures individual propensities toward political participation. First, I present the results of a simulation study used to evaluate the properties of the methodology. Then, I present the results of an application to survey data from the 1990 American Citizen Participation Study (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady, 1995), where the method is used to test hypotheses regarding the impact of resources and civic skills on political participation. Lastly, I propose a new dual-process explanation of the way participation decisions are made, which is consistent with empirical results, and is rooted in recent findings in cognitive psychology.