For You Were Strangers in the Land of Egypt: Clergy, Religiosity, and Public Opinion toward Immigration Reform in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Wallsten ◽  
Tatishe M. Nteta

AbstractRecently, a number of influential clergy leaders have declared their support for liberal immigration reforms. Do the pronouncements of religious leaders influence public opinion on immigration? Using data from a survey experiment embedded in the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we find that exposure to the arguments from high profile religious leaders can compel some individuals to reconsider their views on the immigration. To be more precise, we find that Methodists, Southern Baptists, and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America leaders successfully persuaded respondents who identify with these religious denominations to think differently about a path to citizenship and about the plight of undocumented immigrants. Interestingly, we also uncovered that religiosity matters in different ways for how parishioners from different religious faiths react to messages from their leaders. These findings force us to reconsider the impact that an increasingly strident clergy may be having on public opinion in general and on support for immigration reform in particular.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104398622110016
Author(s):  
Sinchul Back ◽  
Rob T. Guerette

Criminologists and crime prevention practitioners recognize the importance of geographical places to crime activities and the role that place managers might play in effectively preventing crime. Indeed, over the past several decades, a large body of work has highlighted the tendency for crime to concentrate across an assortment of geographic areas, where place management tends to be absent or weak. Nevertheless, there has been a paucity of research evaluating place management strategies and cybercrime within the virtual domain. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of place management techniques on reducing cybercrime incidents in an online setting. Using data derived from the information technology division of a large urban research university in the United States, this study evaluated the impact of an anti-phishing training program delivered to employees that sought to increase awareness and understanding of methods to better protect their “virtual places” from cybercrimes. Findings are discussed within the context of the broader crime and place literature.



1988 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard R. Verdugo ◽  
Naomi Turner Verdugo

This study addresses two issues: (1) the impact of overeducation on the earnings of male workers in the United States, and (2) white-minority earnings differences among males. Given that educational attainment levels are increasing among workers, there is some suspicion that earnings returns to education are not as great as might be expected. This topic is examined by including an overeducation variable in an earnings function. Regarding the second issue addressed in this article, little is actually known about white-minority differences because the bulk of such research compares whites and blacks. By including selected Hispanic groups in this analysis (Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Other Hispanics) we are able to assess white-minority earnings differences to a greater degree. Using data from a 5% sample of the 1980 census to estimate an earnings function, we find that overeducated workers earn less than either undereducated or adequately educated workers. Second, we find that there are substantial earnings differences between whites and minorities, and, also, between the five minority groups examined.



2021 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-266
Author(s):  
Deborah L. Coe ◽  
Brad Petersen

For decades, mainline Protestant denominations in the United States have experienced steady membership declines. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is no different, and our research team has been exploring this topic for years. Faith Communities Today (FACT) is an interfaith project consisting of a series of surveys conducted by the Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership, of which the ELCA is a long-standing member. In this article, we examine data collected from the three decennial FACT surveys to discern where, despite declining membership, God is, to quote the prophet Isaiah, “doing a new thing.” We find that over the past twenty years, the typical ELCA congregation has had a gradually increasing: sense of vitality, belief that it is financially healthy, desire to become more diverse, willingness to call women to serve as pastors, openness to change, and clarity of mission and purpose. Because there are multiple possible explanations for these positive trends, we recommend approaching such trend lines cautiously, viewing them through a critical-thinking lens. Even though there is an increased perception of congregational well-being, overall finances and the number of people involved in the church continue to decline. There is still much work to be done.



2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saharsh Agarwal ◽  
Ananya Sen

In this paper, we examine the impact of racially charged events on the demand for antiracist classroom resources in U.S. public schools. We use book requests made by teachers on DonorsChoose, the largest crowdfunding platform for public school teachers, as a measure of intent to address race-related topics in the classroom. We use the precise timing of high-profile police brutality and other racially charged events in the United States (2010–2020) to identify their effect on antiracism requests relative to a control group. We find a significant increase in antiracism requests following the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and a null effect for all other events in the decade. We also find an increase in requests for books featuring Latinx, Asian, Muslim, and Jewish cultures, suggesting that a focus on equality for one group can spill over and yield culturally aware dialogues for other groups as well. Event studies suggest that local protests played a role in motivating some of the teachers to post these requests. In just four months following George Floyd’s death, $3.4 million worth of books featuring authors and characters from marginalized communities were successfully funded, reaching more than half a million students. Text analysis of impact notes posted by teachers suggests that hundreds of thousands of young students are being engaged in discussions about positive affirmation and cross-cultural acceptance. This paper was accepted by D.J. Wu, information systems.



2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 237802311772765 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Rosenfeld

Most public opinion attitudes in the United States are reasonably stable over time. Using data from the General Social Survey and the American National Election Studies, I quantify typical change rates across all attitudes. I quantify the extent to which change in same-sex marriage approval (and liberalization in attitudes toward gay rights in general) are among a small set of rapid changing outliers in surveyed public opinions. No measured public opinion attitude in the United States has changed more and more quickly than same-sex marriage. I use survey data from Newsweek to illustrate the rapid increase in the 1980s and 1990s in Americans who had friends or family who they knew to be gay or lesbian and demonstrate how contact with out-of-the-closet gays and lesbians was influential. I discuss several potential historical and social movement theory explanations for the rapid liberalization of attitudes toward gay rights in the United States, including the surprising influence of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign.



2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (5) ◽  
pp. 483-497
Author(s):  
Weiwei Chen ◽  
Timothy F. Page

High-deductible health plans (HDHPs) have become increasingly prevalent among employer-sponsored health plans and plans offered through the Health Insurance Marketplace in the United States. This study examined the impact of deductible levels on health care experiences in terms of care access, affordability, routine checkup, out-of-pocket cost, and satisfaction using data from the Health Reform Monitoring Survey. The study also tested whether the experiences of Marketplace enrollees differed from off-Marketplace individuals, controlling for deductible levels. Results from multivariable and propensity score weighted regression models showed that many of the outcomes were adversely affected by deductible levels and Marketplace enrollment. These results highlight the importance of efforts to help individuals choose the plan that fits both their medical needs and their budgets. The study also calls for more attention to improving provider acceptance of HDHPs and Marketplace plans as these plans become increasingly common over time.



2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-202
Author(s):  
Brett O’Hara ◽  
Carla Medalia ◽  
Jerry J. Maples

Abstract Most research on health insurance in the United States uses the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement. However, a recent redesign of the health insurance questions disrupted the historical time trend in 2013. Using data from the American Community Survey, which has a parallel trend in the uninsured rate, we model a bridge estimate of the uninsured rate using the traditional questions. Also, we estimate the effect of changing the questionnaire. We show that the impact of redesigning the survey varies substantially by subgroup. This approach can be used to produce bridge estimates when other questionnaires are redesigned.



Author(s):  
Ali Al-Ramini ◽  
Mohammad A Takallou ◽  
Daniel P Piatkowski ◽  
Fadi Alsaleem

Most cities in the United States lack comprehensive or connected bicycle infrastructure; therefore, inexpensive and easy-to-implement solutions for connecting existing bicycle infrastructure are increasingly being employed. Signage is one of the promising solutions. However, the necessary data for evaluating its effect on cycling ridership is lacking. To overcome this challenge, this study tests the potential of using readily-available crowdsourced data in concert with machine-learning methods to provide insight into signage intervention effectiveness. We do this by assessing a natural experiment to identify the potential effects of adding or replacing signage within existing bicycle infrastructure in 2019 in the city of Omaha, Nebraska. Specifically, we first visually compare cycling traffic changes in 2019 to those from the previous two years (2017–2018) using data extracted from the Strava fitness app. Then, we use a new three-step machine-learning approach to quantify the impact of signage while controlling for weather, demographics, and street characteristics. The steps are as follows: Step 1 (modeling and validation) build and train a model from the available 2017 crowdsourced data (i.e., Strava, Census, and weather) that accurately predicts the cycling traffic data for any street within the study area in 2018; Step 2 (prediction) use the model from Step 1 to predict bicycle traffic in 2019 while assuming new signage was not added; Step 3 (impact evaluation) use the difference in prediction from actual traffic in 2019 as evidence of the likely impact of signage. While our work does not demonstrate causality, it does demonstrate an inexpensive method, using readily-available data, to identify changing trends in bicycling over the same time that new infrastructure investments are being added.



2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (9) ◽  
pp. 1555-1583
Author(s):  
Dimitar Gueorguiev ◽  
Daniel McDowell ◽  
David A. Steinberg

In recent years, the United States has increasingly tried to change other governments’ economic policies by threatening to punish those countries if they do not change course. To better understand the political consequences of these tactics, this paper examines how external threats influence public support for policy change in targeted states. We consider three mechanisms through which economic coercion might alter public opinion: by changing individuals’ interests, by activating their national identities, and by providing them with new information about a policy’s distributive effects. To test these rival explanations, we focus on the case of China–US currency relations. Using data from a survey experiment of Chinese internet users, we find strong support for the informational updating theory. Our evidence suggests that economic coercion can reduce support for policy change because it leads individuals to update their beliefs about who wins and loses from economic policy changes.



2017 ◽  
Vol 81 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kartik Kalaignanam ◽  
Tarun Kushwaha ◽  
Tracey A. Swartz

This article examines the impact of new product development (NPD) “make/buy” choices on product quality using data from the automobile industry. Although the business press has lamented that NPD outsourcing compromises product quality, there is no systematic evidence to support or refute this assertion. Against this backdrop, this study tests a contingency model of the impact of NPD make/buy decisions on immediate and future product quality. The hypotheses are tested using data on NPD make/buy choices of 173 models of 12 automobile firms in the United States between 2007 and 2014. The authors find that whereas NPD buy has a more positive impact on immediate product quality, NPD make has a more positive impact on future product quality. Furthermore, the immediate product quality impact of NPD buy is stronger when (1) technologies are more complex and (2) firm NPD capability is higher. In contrast, the future product quality impact of NPD make is stronger when (1) there is postlaunch adverse feedback and (2) firm NPD capability is higher. The study highlights the complex trade-offs associated with NPD make/buy decisions and offers valuable insights on how firms could manage these decisions.



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