Looking Beyond Demographics: Panel Attrition in the ANES and GSS

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Lazarus Frankel ◽  
D. Sunshine Hillygus
Keyword(s):  
Social Science Research ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Drop Out ◽  
Panel Surveys ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Demographic Predictors ◽  
Panel Attrition ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Data Collections

Longitudinal or panel surveys offer unique benefits for social science research, but they typically suffer from attrition, which reduces sample size and can result in biased inferences. Previous research tends to focus on the demographic predictors of attrition, conceptualizing attrition propensity as a stable, individual-level characteristic—some individuals (e.g., young, poor, residentially mobile) are more likely to drop out of a study than others. We argue that panel attrition reflects both the characteristics of the individual respondent as well as her survey experience, a factor shaped by the design and implementation features of the study. In this article, we examine and compare the predictors of panel attrition in the 2008–2009 American National Election Study, an online panel, and the 2006–2010 General Social Survey, a face-to-face panel. In both cases, survey experience variables are predictive of panel attrition above and beyond the standard demographic predictors, but the particular measures of relevance differ across the two surveys. The findings inform statistical corrections for panel attrition bias and provide study design insights for future panel data collections.

How Much does Empathy Resemble Trust? Trust Radius and Interpersonal Empathy in South Korea

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumin Lee ◽  
◽  
Wonho Jang ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Relationship ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Social ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Demographic Background

This research attempts to 1) explore trust from a theoretical angle using various perspectives in the social science research literature and 2) reveal the empirical relationship between trust and empathy at the individual level. Although trust and empathy share similar characteristics when considered in the realm of theory, they have typically been probed in distinct disciplines. Hence, there is a need for interdisciplinary perspective that addresses two concepts together. Using the Social Attitude Survey for Korean Society data collected in 2021, this study conducted a correlation and multivariate analysis that examined how much trust and empathy resemble. The results show that trust radius and interpersonal empathy are highly correlated. Also, trust and empathy levels differ from individual to individual in terms of one’s socioeconomic and demographic background. From this comparison, we emphasize the importance of the macro level effect of trust and empathy.

scholarly journals Lonely, Poor, and Ugly? How Cultural Practices and Forms of Capital Relate to Physical Unattractiveness

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-105
Author(s):  
Christian Schneickert ◽  
Leonie C. Steckermeier ◽  
Lisa-Marie Brand
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
Physical Appearance ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Structure And Agency

Physical attractiveness is increasingly framed as a meritocratic good that involves individual benefits, such as higher wages or success in the partner market. Investing in one’s physical appearance is thereby seen as a means to increase one’s human capital. While the positive effects are well documented, its counterpart, the dark side of physical appearance, has received much less attention from social science research. This article sheds light on the negative effects of physical appearance using a theoretical framework based on the cultural sociology of Bourdieu, integrating both structure and agency perspectives. Using data from the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) from 2014, we demonstrate that unattractiveness is socially stratified by economic, cultural, and social capital. The article highlights the relevance of cultural factors (e.g. forms of cultural capital and cultural practices) for the analysis of the interplay between physical appearance and stratification as well as the relevance of physical appearance for cultural sociology.

Divining Nuclear Intentions: A Review Essay

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
William C. Potter ◽  
Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Proliferation ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Great Relevance ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Level Of Analysis

Although projections of nuclear proliferation abound, they rarely are founded on empirical research or guided by theory. Even fewer studies are informed by a comparative perspective. The two books under review—The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions, and Foreign Policy, by Jacques Hymans, and Nuclear Logics: Alternative Paths in East Asia and the Middle East, by Etel Solingen, are welcome exceptions to this general state of affairs, and represent the cutting edge of nonproliferation research. Both works challenge conventional conceptions of the sources of nuclear weapons decisions and offer new insights into why past predictions of rapid proliferation failed to materialize and why current prognoses about rampant proliferation are similarly flawed. While sharing a number of common features, including a focus on subsystemic determinants of national behavior, the books differ in their methodology, level of analysis, receptivity to multicausal explanations, and assumptions about decisionmaker rationality and the revolutionary nature of the decision. Where one author emphasizes the importance of the individual leader's national identity conception in determining a state's nuclear path, the other explains nuclear decisions primarily with regard to the political-economic orientation of the ruling coalition. Notwithstanding a tendency to overinterpret evidence, the books represent the best of contemporary social science research and provide compelling interpretations of nuclear proliferation dynamics of great relevance to scholars and policymakers alike.

Longitudinal Surveys

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Sunshine Hillygus ◽  
Steven Snell
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Panel Surveys ◽  
Longitudinal Surveys ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Level Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
Panel Attrition ◽  
Panel Conditioning ◽  
Over Time

Longitudinal or panel surveys, in which the same individuals are interviewed repeatedly over time, are increasingly common in the social sciences. The benefit of such surveys is that they track the same respondents so that researchers can measure individual-level change over time, offering greater causal leverage than cross-sectional surveys. Panel surveys share the challenges of other surveys while also facing several unique issues in design, implementation, and analysis. This chapter considers three such challenges: (1) the tension between continuity and innovation in the questionnaire design; (2) panel attrition, whereby some individuals who complete the first wave of the survey fail to participate in subsequent waves; and (3) specific types of measurement error—panel conditioning and seam bias. It includes an overview of these issues and their implications for data quality and outlines approaches for diagnosing and correcting for these issues in the design and analysis of panel surveys.

Recovering Meaning by Reforming Academic Identities and Practices

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Academic Identities ◽  
Group Research ◽  
Practice Teaching ◽  
Academic Citizenship ◽  
The Individual

Part II offers a number of proposals and suggestions for recovering meaning in social science research at the individual, institutional, and policy levels. These measures offer the prospect of many small ‘wins’ through which the system can be reformed, rather than one sweeping programme for change. This chapter addresses the identities of individual researchers and the research methodologies they use in their work, and encourages a different approach at the level of individual and group research practices and its outcomes. It argues for new scholarly identities and many different ways of fashioning them, in which research is one, but not the only, important practice. Teaching, outreach activities, and academic citizenship, it is argued, are also important aspects of scholarship. So too are thinking and reading in depth and breadth, writing textbooks and book reviews, journalistic pieces and blogs. Chapters 7 and 8 will address institutional and policy issues.

Heuristic Inquiry

2019 ◽  
pp. 66-82
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Doctoral Degree ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Heuristic Inquiry ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
Doctoral Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Psychology Doctoral ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter presents current research insights into the selection of heuristic inquiries for a doctoral-level inquiry. Heuristic inquiry within social science research allows for self-as-subject representations in search of the essential meaning of phenomena or constructs explored and through the analysis of the individual experience, results may inform larger sociocultural contexts. While receptivity of heuristic inquiry as rigorous doctoral-level research varies by discipline and institution, the research design in doctoral education remains widely accepted for doctoral-level inquiry as it often appeals to the doctoral scholar due to the deep introspection expected in the phases of analysis. While heuristic inquiry emerged within psychology, doctoral scholars use the introspective research design across fields of study, the doctoral degree program, and institution to meet all institutional requirements and ethical assurances. Like autoethnography, the relational aspects between doctoral scholar and research supervisor are vital to successful heuristic inquiry and the doctoral scholar's development as a new investigator.

scholarly journals The Health Consequences of Social Mobility in Contemporary China

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. 2644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fei Yan ◽  
Guangye He ◽  
Yunsong Chen
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Provincial Level ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
Self Rated Health ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
The Individual

Although numerous studies have shown the importance of an individual’s socioeconomic status on his or her self-rated health status, less well-known is whether self-perceived class mobility, a measure highly correlated with an individual’s de facto social class and past mobility experiences, affects self-rated health. In this paper, we attempt to fill the gap by examining how perception of class mobility is associated with self-rated health. Using eight waves of Chinese General Social Survey data spanning the years 2005 to 2015, we conducted an analysis at the micro (individual) level and the macro (provincial) level. Analyses at both levels yielded consistent results. At the individual level, we employed ordered logistic regression and found that the perception of experiencing downward mobility was associated with significantly lower self-rated health in both rural and urban areas compared with those who consider themselves to be upwardly mobile or immobile. At the provincial level, the findings from static panel analysis further revealed that there is a positive relationship between the self-perceived class mobility and self-rated health level.

Reconciling Individual and Aggregate Evidence Concerning Partisan Stability: Applying Time-Series Models to Panel Survey Data

2002 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald P. Green ◽  
David H. Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Data Generation ◽  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Panel Surveys ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Empirical Regularities ◽  
Integrated Time Series ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Individual

Party identification has been studied extensively using both individual- and aggregate-level data. This paper attempts to formulate a statistical model that can account for the range of empirical generalizations that have emerged from aggregate time series and panel surveys. Using Monte Carlo simulation, we show that only certain types of data generation processes can account for these empirical regularities. Deciding which of the remaining types best explains the data means investigating the ways in which individual-level partisanship behaves over time. Partisanship at the aggregate-level tends to be highly autocorrelated, reequilibrating slowly in the wake of each perturbation. Working downward from the analysis of aggregate data, previous researchers argued that aggregate partisanship is fractionally integrated and contended that dynamics at the individual level are therefore heterogeneous. Using data from three panel surveys, we present the first direct assessment of individual-level dynamics. We also investigate the hypothesis that these dynamics vary among individuals, a claim that motivates much recent work on fractionally integrated time series. The model that best explains the observed characteristics of party identification is one in which individuals respond in similar ways to external shocks, reequilibrate rapidly thereafter, and seldom change their equilibrium level of partisan attachment.

scholarly journals Collage Life Story Elicitation Technique: A Representational Technique for Scaffolding Autobiographical Memories

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gertina Van Schalkwyk
Keyword(s):  
Social Constructionism ◽  
Narrative Therapy ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Autobiographical Memories ◽  
Basic Premise ◽  
Dialogical Self ◽  
Narrative Performance ◽  
The Individual

A basic premise in narrative therapy and inquiry is that life story telling is a mechanism by which experiences are rendered meaningful within some form of structure. However, narrative inquiry has to take cognisance of difficulties ensuing from discursive practices for different populations when eliciting their life stories. In this article I explicate a unique method, the Collage Life story Elicitation Technique (CLET), geared towards scaffolding life story remembering. Based on the theoretical underpinnings of social constructionism (Gergen, 2000), symbolic interactionism (Berg, 2009) and performative strategies in social science research the CLET provides a mode of expression and narrative performance for positioning the dialogical self. As the individual engages in collage-making and narrating, cognitive, motivational and affective aspects of autobiographical memories emerge while telling her or his life story. Different forms of positioning in the dialogical self and significant attachments to people, objects and life events co-exist in the verbal and non-verbal communications elicited with this technique. As suggested by the pilot study, the CLET provides a structure within which non-English speaking participants could explore multiple forms of positioning in the dialogical self without the restrictions of a verbal interview conversation.

scholarly journals The Effects of Provincial and Individual Religiosity on Deviance in China: A Multilevel Modeling Test of the Moral Community Thesis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiuhua Wang ◽  
Sung Joon Jang
Keyword(s):  
Multilevel Modeling ◽  
Inverse Relationship ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
Moral Community ◽  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Deviant Behaviors ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Province Level

This paper examines the moral community thesis in the secular context of China. Using multilevel logistic regression, we test (1) whether both individual- (measured by affiliation with institutional religion) and aggregate-level religiosity (measured by the number of religious sites per 10,000 people in province) are inversely related to law and rule violations at the individual level and (2) whether the province-level religiosity enhances the inverse relationship between individual religiosity and the deviant behaviors. Results from analyzing data from the 2010 China General Social Survey and the Spatial Explorer of Religions show that both individual- and aggregate-level religiosity are inversely related to the odds of violating the law and various rules of government, transportation, workplace, and other organizations. However, the cross-level interactions are not significant across models, indicating that the contextual religiosity does not increase the effect of individual-level religiosity on deviance. Implications of findings for the moral community thesis are discussed.

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