Wave II of Political Socialization Study Nearing Completion

Wave II of the multi-wave study of political socialization of adolescents in the Columbus Public School (CPS) system is nearing completion. Wave I, conducted in fall 2005 and winter 2006, included interviews of teachers, parents, and students. Wave II, conducted in fall 2006, includes interviews with hundreds of current and former CPS students to assess the long-term impact of civics curricula, political conversation, and mass media on democratic outcomes. Pending additional funding, the study will finish in 2008 with a final post-election follow-up interview. To read more about Wave II, click here.

Welcome to Lance Holbert!

With great pleasure we welcome Lance Holbert to the School of Communication and the COPS group as an Associate Professor effective Fall 2007. Lance is an extremely prolific scholar in the field of communication and he will be a great addition to the group. Until he arrives at OSU, he can be reached at r.lance.holbert@gmail.com.

COPS student Lindsay Hoffman takes job at U of Delaware

Congratulations to Lindsay Hoffman, who after going on several interviews (and experiencing a number of other contacts expressing interest) has decided to accept an offer to be an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Delaware. As a former BA/MA graduate from that program, I can attest to the strong quality of this program. Lindsay will still be with us through the end of the summer, but please take the time to congratulate her on getting this job so early in the search process.

COPS member brings home another one

Congratulations to Teresa Myers, for taking home a top 3 paper award from MAPOR 2006 for her paper with Cat Goodall, "Fear Appeals in Political Communication: An Examination of Public Opinion about Social Security Reform and Global Warming." For a more comprehensive list of COPS paper awards over the last couple of years, click the "Recent member awards" link to the right.

More election maps

Here are some interesting data maps reflecting the outcome of the recent congressional elections as created by Mark Newman of the University of Michigan.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2006/

Election data and graphics

For those who are into both political data and graphics, be sure to look at the extensive Election 2006 section of the New York Times website. Data are gathered there from the Senate, House and Governor elections. The House page is particularly extensive. You can select districts to look at that meet a variety of criteria, see them on a map, and then see a summary of data about them on the right. The sliding chart at the top that looks a bit like a bar code compares the 2004 and 2006 results is also awesome. Note that many of the maps can be weighted by population for a different view of their importance. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/elections/2006/House.html

Some Work and Some Play

Let's not forget another event that makes MAPOR weekend so enjoyable--watching the OSU-Michigan game with other Big Ten football fans. To get you in the spirit, relive last year's game by clicking here.

Response Latencies in Survey Research

Several COPS members have, over the years, been using response latencies in surveys and experiments. How long it takes a person to answer a question functions as an important window through which we can peer into the "black box" that is the human mind. A recent Washington Post article talks about some of the foundations of this research. Because of the increase in the number and types of empirical questions that can be answered when response latencies are measured, we are using "latent timers" (a methodology developed in part here at OSU in the Political Science department) in the TOPS survey this year. Analyzing these data should keep us very busy for years to come.

Ohio Center of Political Universe

Or, not far from it. A recent article reveals that campaign spending on federal-level races by "outside" groups is twice as high in Ohio as in any other state in the nation. Nice to be here locally studying it as part of our three-wave COPS/TOPS panel study (see previous post on this), which is now in the middle of Wave 2. Anyhow, read the article here.

COPS makes waves in Washington D.C.

You may be interested in reading a report in today's Washington Times newspaper discussing the research of COPS members Andrew Hayes and Mike Huge and its importance for politics and participation in the current election context. Just click the link here.

So Goes the Nation

The 90-minute documentary film by Endgame Entertainment about Ohio's central role in the 2004 presidential election is playing this week at the campus Gateway theaters.

Patriot Act Meets Content Analysis

The method of content analysis for assessing tone of media coverage has entered the terrorism age. See the NY Times story here...

Innovations in survey methodology

Former Ohio State professor Jon Krosnick is developing some exciting new methods for increasing response rates and reducing costs... read more about his NSF-funded 2008 election project at http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2006/september27/krosnick-092706.html

More data for polling junkies

SurveyUSA's coverage of the Ohio gubernatorial and Senate races includes a cool tracking feature that allows users to view respondent trends broken out by a decent list of key demographic variables as well as political leanings. They have three time points thus far.

Click on the large "T" in the crosstabs to sort and view tracking data.

COPS does TOPS

This year three COPS faculty (Eveland, Hayes, & Kosicki) and some COPS graduate students are working with faculty and graduate students in the Political Science department to field The Ohio Political Survey (TOPS). This year TOPS will be a three wave panel study plus a cross-sectional study of Ohio adults. Wave I of TOPS began today. Wave II will begin in early October, and Wave III (and the cross-section) will begin the day after the election. The study will examine a number of topics related to Ohio politics and the governor/U.S. senate campaigns, including election and political scandals, opinion perceptions, political discussion networks, and new forms of political media. Look for preliminary results posted here as the data become available, and more detailed findings to be submitted to future academic conferences.

Election 2006 Polls

If you're a popular public opinion poll junkie like me, you might enjoy spending some of your "time off" as summer winds down checking out some really top-notch Web sites that are serving as clearing houses for information on how the American public's answering today's big questions.

Slate's Election Score Card
Slate follows up on their excellent 2004 poll aggregation with a pretty comprehensive look at the nation's top senate and gubernatorial races, as well as a "generic candidate" look at the house. There's also an informative "momentum shift” feature.

Pollster.com
Slate basically provides the high points from this site, but you can get more detail here. Not to mention the "Mystery Pollster" blog.

Polling Report.com
Polling Report posts frequency analyses for virtually every major, popular, public opinion poll. As a result, it's updated on almost a daily basis.

While most of these aren't very "scholarly," they might spark some research ideas, or at least help provide a feel for what the nation's saying in the here and now. I’m sure there are other great sites out there; these are just the ones that I’m currently frequenting.

Research spaces for your use

As the new academic year starts, don't forget about the fantastic research facilities available for your use. A permanent link has been added to the right of this page, or you can just click here to view some images.

BYU 2004 Election Panel available

In 2004 a group led by researchers at BYU gathered panel data relevant for us COPS folks. Maybe most interestingly, they did a specific sample of Ohio and oversamples of other battleground states. This could be a potentially useful (and less cliche) data set for secondary analysis, especially for those with an interest in Ohio politics or comparisons of media environments. Check it out:

BYU Panel

ICA 2007 Call for Papers

The 2007 ICA conference is in San Francisco May 24-28. The call for papers has been issued. See the call here. The deadline for submission is Nov 1, 2006.

Is Columbus the center of the political universe? Jon Stewart apparently thinks so...

According to Gongwer News Service's Ohio Report:

Indecision Ohio: It's official: the Buckeye State is now firmly ensconced in the national conscious as a major player in this year's midterm election cycle. Why else would Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" plan to record a week's worth of installments from the Ohio State University campus in Columbus?

Under the banner of "Indecision 2006," the politically-minded half-hour show of self-described "fake news" will stage its "Battlefield Ohio: The Daily Show's Midwest Midterm Midtacular" at OSU's Roy Bowen Theatre. The Oct. 30-Nov. 2 segments will be taped earlier on those dates for airing at 11 p.m.

Comedy Central said in announcing the show's plans, "Host Jon Stewart will be joined by his team of award-seeking commentators and correspondents as they seek to answer the age-old question: Just what the hell is a buckeye?"

It will be the fifth road trip for the series, which previously taped shows in Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Volume #75, Report #162, Article #08 --Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Midwest Political Science Association conference

The submission deadline for the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) is October 2, 2006. MPSA is held in Chicago each year at the Palmer House Hilton; this year the conference will be held April 12-15, 2007. For more information, visit the MPSA Web site here.

Technology and Politics

Read an interesting article discussing the impact of DVRs on political advertising, and the implications for online political advertising.

It looks like another great year at MAPOR 2006 for OSU COPS

Well folks, it looks like we'll be hard to ignore again this year in Chicago at MAPOR 2006. The group submitted 20 proposals from 15 different COPS members.

Ohio Politics in the National Media

Once again Ohio is becoming ground zero in the national political wars, with several major articles focusing on recent events in our state.

Rolling Stone magazine has been getting a lot of attention with its recent cover story by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., asking "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" While this particular piece adds little new information to the ongoing blogger-debate about the 2004 election problems in Ohio, it does seem to pull together the main sources and threads of previous conversations and allegations and put them in one place. You can find this piece at

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

RedState.org has wasted no time offering a nasty attack on the Kennedy article.

http://steven-foley.redstate.com/story/2006/6/28/10506/2427

For those who prefer their controversies prospective rather than retrospective, Andrew Gumbel, writing in The Nation, weighes in on what he sees as continuing election integrity issues in Ohio that he claims will affect the 2006 race for governor. The fact that the Republican candidate for governor is the supervising official for his own election is causing some concern.

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20060717&s=gumbel

Finally, there is a growing shelf of books on the issue of Ohio's role in the 2004 election:

Bleifuss, Joel & Freeman, Steven F. (2006). Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Seven Stories Press.

Miller, Mark Crispin (2005). Fooled Again. Basic Books.

Conyers, John (2006). What went wrong in Ohio: The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election. Academy Chicago Publishers.

Rogue Scientist Has Own Scientific Method

A little end of quarter humor. Check out this article...

MAPOR 2006 call for proposals

It is already time to start thinking about MAPOR. The 2006 call for proposals has just been made. Go to the MAPOR web page and select the "conference" link. Proposals (no more than two pages) are due at the end of June.

...and again!

Yet still another congratulations is in order! Jason Reineke has won the top student paper award in the AEJMC Law Division this year for his submission to the 2006 conference titled "The Politics of Censorship: A Curved Explanation for a Contentious Phenomenon." As a sole-authored submission, this is an especially significant and impressive accomplishment. Congratulations to Jason!

When Will it Ever End?

And, we have yet another award winner in our midst. Andrew Hayes' paper with Kris Preacher, "Bootstrapping specific indirect effects in multiple mediator models of media effects" was ranked as a Top Three Faculty Paper by the Communication Theory and Methodology division of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication. Congrats Andrew! This marks the FOURTH CONSECUTIVE YEAR that a political communication/public opinion faculty member or graduate student from the School of Communication has had an award-winning paper in this division.

Still more awards

Since congratulations abound recently, why stop now? Young Mie Kim's submission to the political communication division of ICA received a top faculty paper award. She'll be presenting it in Germany in June:

Kim, Y. M., & Vishak, J. (2006, June). Just laugh! You don't need to remember: The effects of the entertainment media on political information acquisition and processing. Paper submitted to the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Dresden, Germany.

Congratulations Young Mie! (John Vishak, by the way, is an M.A. student in the communication program here, but not a COPS member).

Another winner!

The winner of ICA Political Communication division's "Best Paper in Political Communication" award for 2005 has just been announced. Two were chosen this year, one of them being from COPS's own Chip Eveland, for his collaborative effort with Dhavan Shan, Jaeho Cho, and Nojin Kwak:

Shah, D. V., Cho, J., Eveland, W. P., & Kwak, N. (2005). Information and expression in a digital age: Modeling internet effects on civic participation. Communication Research 32, 531-565.

Congratulations to Chip!

Survey Research Colloquium

Dr. Amy Ferketich of the School of Public Health will be discussing her recent survey research projects among Ohio's Amish population this Friday, 1:30-2:45 in the Journalism Hall of Fame Room. The title of her talk will be Barriers to Sampling an Isolated Population: The Ohio State University Amish Population Study Experience.

While this talk does not deal with public opinion or politics, it will deal with some interesting interdisciplinary issues in survey research and will be an opening into that world of research. Particularly if you are interested in the Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Survey Research, I hope to see you Friday at this talk.

Kirill Glebov Coming to OSU

Kirill Glebov has decided to join us at OSU for his MA, and will, I suspect, be joining our COPS group in short order. Kirill currently works for a Russian news agency in Washington, DC and should provide some interesting perspective for the COPS group, especially as it related to international communication. Welcome, Kirill!

Another Welcome is in Order!

Let's also welcome Greg Richey to the COPS group. Greg is currently finishing up his BA in Psychology and Political Science here at OSU, and will join the School of Communication's MA program in the fall.

Excited to be a Buckeye!

Thanks for the welcome to the COPS group at OSU. I'm very excited to be a Buckeye now! If any grad students are interested, I'd like to work on an abstract for MAPOR, since I've never been to that conference. My e-mail is KrisLand@gmail.com in case you all have any ideas. See you in fall quarter!

Kristen

Welcoming New COPS Members

As some of you may know, we already know that we'll have at least two new COPS members starting our PhD program next year: Myiah Hively (currently getting her MA at Washington State) and Kristen Landreville (currently getting her MA at U of Florida). And, with two weeks remaining before the universal deadline for accepting funding offers, we expect to be making more announcements in the weeks to come. For now, welcome Myiah and Kristen!!!

ANES Online Commons

The ANES has created an Online Commons to encourage the submission of new ideas from individual investigators about ways to measure relevant concepts and relationships on their election surveys.

The Online Commons can be viewed by anyone, although registration is required if you want to post.

For information about registering, go to http://www.electionstudies.org/onlinecommons.htm

More MAPOR photos

Here are some newly released photos taken at MAPOR 2005. There is a nice picture of OSU COPS members Jason Rieneke and Lindsay Hoffman accepting the top student paper award from Rick Perloff.

Two COPS Members Win Major Public Opinion Award!

The World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) has acknowledge the top quality of the work of two COPS members, Andrew Hayes and Carroll Glynn, by awarding them the Worcester Prize for Best Article appearing in the journal International Journal of Public Opinion Research for 2005.

The papers (a one-two punch in the 3rd and 4th issues of 2005) put forth the concept of Willingness to Self-Censor and present evidence for the validity of its measurement. The articles can be downloaded from an OSU computer at:
Willingness to Self-Censor: A Construct and Measurement Tool for Public Opinion Research
and
Validating the Willingness to Self-Censor Scale: Individual Differences in the Effect of the Climate of Opinion on Opinion Expression

Jim Shanahan of Cornell University was a co-author on the papers.

Congratulations Andrew and Carroll!!!

New ANES Website

The American National Election Studies has announced a new website address:
www.electionstudies.org.

According to the ANES, the new site suggests that that the project is "an asset of the entire scientific community" and run by scholars from many universities. Some of the material has been rearranged and updated.

New Data Archive Links

I have added a new set of data archive links to the right side of this page. Use the COPS blog as your one-stop-shop for accessing public data for research purposes. This list will grow as you let me know which links should be added.

Searching the Daily Me

Seems that if searching Google exposes you to too much information that doesn't fit your political biases, you've got an alternative -- a search engine that divides results into ideological leanings!
Read more here.

Web-based Reseach Tool for Linking Media Markets to People

COPS group members might find a new web page useful that is currently being developed. It maps media markets to the people in those markets and provides information about who controls what media in those markets. They are still working on U.S., but Canada and some of the South American countries are up and running. For details, go to the web page here.

Matt Nisbet speaks out

COPS member Matt Nisbet recently presented some of his research and thinking revelant to the stem cell debate and proposition 71 in California. For a nice picture, click here.

Reminder About Grants in Broadcasting

Don't forget that the deadline for the NAB Grants for Research in Broadcasting is coming up (January 31st). This is a particularly good opportunity for senior graduate students, especially those close to dissertating, to get some money to do research on a topic related to broadcasting. In 2005, it appears that at least one graduate student won an award for a solo project.

Follow this link for information:
http://www.nab.org/Research/Grants/grants.asp