Misreporting and Vicarious Political Participation at the Local Level

Volgy, Thomas J.; Schwarz, John E.

doi:10.1086/268881

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…29. A number of papers have noted that respondents typically overreport forms of participation like these because of a social desirability bias "in which cognitive dissonance can lead to a rather consistent distortion of memory in order to reinforce continued perception of oneself as a good citizen" (Cahalan 1968; see Anderson and Silver 1986;Hill and Hurely 1984;Katosh and Traugott 1981;Silver, Anderson, and Abramson 1986;Volgy and Schwarz 1984;Weiss 1986). One explanation for our results could be that these same biases inflate reports of involvement in high school governance, church attendance, and other activities leading to a spurious June 1995 correlation with political participation.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation

1995

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This paper develops a resource model of political participation. The resources considered are time, money, and civic skills—those communications and organizational capacities that are essential to political activity. These skills are not only acquired early in life but developed in the nonpolitical institutional settings of adult life: the workplace, organizations, and churches and synagogues. These resources are distributed differentially among groups defined by socioeconomic status. A two-stage least squares analysis shows these resources have powerful effects on overall political activity, thus explaining why socioeconomic status has traditionally been so powerful in predicting participation. We disaggregate overall activity into three kinds of acts: those that involve giving time, those that entail donating money, and voting. Each requires a different configuration of resources resulting in different patterns of stratification across various political acts.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation

1995

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“…In addition, some way to verify self-reported participation is desirable since several researchers have noted the tendency for people to report that they have participated when in fact, they have not (Clausen, 1968;Katosh and Traugott, 1981;Volgy and Schwarz, 1984). One of these limitations is the self-selection bias inherent in almost all mail surveys.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Participation: A Matter of Community, Stress, Job Autonomy, and Contact by Political Organizations

Burn¹,

Konrad²

1987

Political Psychology

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“…In contrast, Enos and Hersh (2015) speculate that there is overreporting in self-reports of working for a party or campaign, but also do not provide direct evidence in this regard. Volgy and Schwarz's (1984) analysis of engagement in local activities (petition signing, participating in public hearings, and contacting officials) found that 57 of 204 people surveyed (28%) misreported that they had participated when they had not. Interestingly, Pierce and Lovrich (1982) found that people systematically underreported a seemingly socially acceptable behavior of signing an initiative petition.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

It’s Not All About Resources

Miller

Saunders

2016

American Politics Research

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The dominant political science explanations of the causes of individual-level political participation converge on three sets of antecedents-resources/ skills, recruitment, and political engagement. However, the overwhelming majority of the empirical tests of these antecedents rely on cross-sectional data, obscuring the fact that micro-level participation in the United States is more accurately characterized by instability rather than by stability. Using the American National Election Study and Jennings time-series data, we for the first time demonstrate the inability of traditionally examined antecedents to explain individual-level variation in political behavior over time. Finding extant theory inadequate in this regard, we propose a modification of participation theories that puts the concept of motivation in the foreground. We argue that a model that includes motivation may both pave the way for a better understanding of the variation in participation over time and suggest possible prescriptions to help alleviate representational biases at the individual level.

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Misreporting and Vicarious Political Participation at the Local Level

Cited by 12 publications

References 5 publications

Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation

Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation

Political Participation: A Matter of Community, Stress, Job Autonomy, and Contact by Political Organizations

It’s Not All About Resources

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