Elite interviews have long been a staple of state politics research. Improved information technology facilitates the use of elite interviews, but also underscores the need for attending to their design, operationalization, and analysis. This essay provides a framework for developing, conducting, and interpreting elite interviews, and suggests means to enhance the validity and reliability of findings by considering instrumentation, sampling, data collection, and transcript analysis.Elite interviews offer political scientists a rich, cost-effective vehicle for generating unique data to investigate the complexities of policy and politics (Dexter 1970). These advantages are particularly appealing at the sub-national level due to the abundance of and variation among subjects and the ready access to these subjects in the states. Given elite interviews' ability to generate highly reliable and valid data, they have long been a staple of state politics research (Reeher 1996;Beamer 1999;Jewell 1982;Morehouse 1998;Jewell and Whicker 1994).The utility and validity of information produced by elite interviews is dependent upon the analyst's research design. Poorly prepared and unstructured interviews can yield poor information and funnel an inquiry away from the primary research focus to a respondent's stream-of-consciousness thoughts and biased perceptions. To insure reliability, elite interviews must pay careful attention to question formats and wording, sampling, and the process of data collection and analysis. This essay addresses each of these issues, identifying ways to enhance the validity of elite interviews and the contribution they make to state politics and policy research.the purpose and format of elite interview
This paper has two objectives. First, we examine state adoption and implementation of income support policies under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. We develop a composite measure of income support that includes welfare programs that scholars traditionally investigate and adds optional policies that encourage independence through work. Second, we engage a substantive focus on the administrative ability and willingness of states to adopt and implement sophisticated income support policies. We investigate the extent to which state government professionalism, ideology, economic resources, and racially based policies have shaped state policy. We find that the percentage of the state population is liberal; state racial demographics and governmental professionalism are critical determinants of state welfare and income support regimes. Significantly, we find no evidence that states are converging toward high‐quality, effectively financed welfare policies or income regime policies to help the poor move into and economically survive in the job market.
This article outlines the work incentives and income support provided by the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and illustrates how state earned income and dependent care credits assist working poor families. State earned income and dependent care tax credits serve as critical complements to the EITC, the federal government's largest antipoverty program. By attending to specific components of each tax credit, state policymakers can maximize state funds that qualify for federal maintenance of effort requirements under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PROWRA), and they can reinforce positive effects and offset work disincentives stemming from current federal tax parameters. Copyright 2005 by The Policy Studies Organization.
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