Hard Choices, Easy Answers : Values, Information, and American Public Opinion

by Alvarez, Michael R.; Brehm, John

• ISBN13: 9780691089188
• ISBN10: 0691089183
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-07-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Those who seek to accurately gauge public opinion must first ask themselves: Why are certain opinions highly volatile while others are relatively fixed? Why are some surveys affected by question wording or communicative medium (e.g., telephone) while others seem immune? In Hard Choices, Easy Answers, R. Michael Alvarez and John Brehm develop a new theory of response variability that, by reconciling the strengths and weaknesses of the standard approaches, will help pollsters and scholars alike better resolve such perennial problems. Working within the context of U.S. public opinion, they contend that the answers Americans give rest on a variegated structure of political predispositions--diverse but widely shared values, beliefs, expectations, and evaluations.Alvarez and Brehm argue that respondents deploy what they know about politics (often little) to think in terms of what they value and believe. Working with sophisticated statistical models, they offer a unique analysis of not just what a respondent is likely to choose, but also how variable those choices would be under differing circumstances. American public opinion can be characterized in one of three forms of variability, conclude the authors: ambivalence, equivocation, and uncertainty. Respondents are sometimes ambivalent, as in attitudes toward abortion or euthanasia. They are often equivocal, as in views about the scope of government. But most often, they are uncertain, sure of what they value, but unsure how to use those values in political choices.

Author Biography

R. Michael Alvarez is Professor of Political Science at the California Institute of Technology John Brehm is Professor and Chair of Political Science at the University of Chicago

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. vii
List of Tables	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
A Fickle Public?	p. 1
Theory and Methods	p. 13
Predispositions	p. 15
Why Does Political Information Matter?	p. 27
Ambivalence, Uncertainty, and Equivocation	p. 52
Mass Public Opinion	p. 65
Ambivalent Attitudes: Abortion and Euthanasia	p. 67
Uncertainty and Racial Attitudes	p. 100
Equivocation	p. 125
Masses and Elites	p. 149
Mass Opinion and Representation	p. 151
Do Elites Experience Ambivalence Where Masses Do Not?	p. 194
Politics, Psychology, and the Survey Response	p. 216
Notes	p. 225
References	p. 233
Index	p. 243
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