In 1992 a record 14 women sought statewide office by running "as women" and as representatives of women. In this article we examine whether their appeals led to widespread voting on the basis of gender identity. We find evidence that the sex of the voter is significantly related to voting for female candidates in eight of 13 states, and among partisans of both parties as well as Independents. Further, we find that these effects are amplified by Democratic female candidates who are rated as most feminist, and that this is especially the case for those with no partisan attachments.

Decades of research have documented the positive impacts of cooperative learning on student success: increased learning, retention through graduation, improved critical thinking, and intrinsic motivation. One cooperative teaching technique, however, has received relatively little attention. In the two-stage cooperative, group, or “pyramid” exam students first take an exam individually—as in traditional testing—and then take the same exam together with their learning group, with the exam grade being a weighted combination of their individual and group scores. This approach uses the exam itself not only for evaluation, but also as a learning tool. Although some researchers have studied group exams, they have not isolated the impact of group tests from individual achievement—an important omission. Using data from a mass lecture introductory sociology course, I found that holding individual achievement constant the group exam process significantly increased learning both for students who knew the material initially and for those who did not. This suggests that cooperative exams not only enhance learning but also allow for the process and form of testing to become more closely linked to the process and form of teaching and learning.

Generous contact efforts were used to recruit 3,004 respondents into the first wave of the St. Louis Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) project, a psychiatric epidemiologic study of the general population, conducted from 1981-1982. These efforts were analyzed to establish which sociodemographic characteristics or current psychiatric disorders were determinants of difficulty in recruitment. Being young, male, black, a nonrural resident, educated, and full-time employed were the demographic characteristics associated with increased contact efforts. Persons currently meeting criteria for an alcohol disorder required almost 20% more contact attempts than those without the disorder; this difficulty lay both in their being less available for an initial contact and refusing at a higher rate once contacted. An optimal recruitment effort cutoff point is provided, and a method is suggested for detecting that optimal point in the course of ongoing studies.

The persistent decline in voting in presidential elections since 1960 has resulted in serious scholarly attention being given to nonvoting. Despite the quality of these studies, however, the ratio of what we know about nonvoting to what we do not know is rather low. In the hopes of improving this situation, I advance the hypothesis that one reason that individuals do not vote is that their interests are not represented by any of the major candidates. To test this hypothesis, I used the SRC election studies (1968)(1969)(1970)(1971)(1972)(1973)(1974)(1975)(1976)(1977)(1978)(1979)(1980) to construct measures of individuals' perceived distance from the major candidates on a variety of issues. Net of an extensive set of factors usually invoked to explain participation, increased distance from candidates significantly decreases the probability of voting. The implications of these results are discussed.

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