Syllabus for Communication

Communication 318 “Advanced Research Design”

Jon A. Krosnick

Professor of Communication, Political Science, and Psychology (by courtesy) Stanford University

Winter, 2005

Contact information: [email protected], 725-3031

Meetings: Monday, Wednesday 1:15 – 3:00 pm, Chaffee Room

The purpose of this course is to introduce you to a broad range of social science research methods that are widely used and may be of value to you in your own work. Our class meetings will feature student presentations of readings (we will share the responsibilities for these presentations), followed up discussion of the readings. I assume that everyone will read the readings before class and come with interesting observations, objections, questions, extensions, implications, and the like about each reading, to stimulate discussion. The readings are intended to be provocative and discussion inspiring.

Because the volume of assigned reading is sizable, you will certainly want to find a way to read and extract the useful content while also being efficient and not spending time reading details that are relatively peripheral to our interests. In other words, if you find yourself spending as long as an hour reading a single journal article, then you are reading it with too much attention to the trees (details) and not enough attention to the forest (the nature and application of the research method in this context). I am happy to provide advice about efficient reading to anyone who would value it, so that the burden of the class assignments is manageable for you.

Class assignment: The purpose of this assignment is to encourage you to understand the research methods that we review and to consider applying them in your own research. To this end, I will ask you each week to write eight 2-page papers. On the days marked with asterisks below, please bring to class a 2-page (double-spaced, 1-inch margins) description of how you might apply the research method of the day in a study of a phenomenon of interest to you. Begin each paper with a quick one-paragraph summary of the hypothesis that you want to test, and spend the rest of the paper describing (in as much detail as you can fit in) the design of a specific study to test the hypothesis. During class, you will present your study design for comment and discussion.

Final grades will be based on a mixture of the quantity and quality of your class discussion participation, the quality of your class presentations, and the quality of your papers. Schedule of Topics and Readings

Jan. 5 Orientation

Jan. 10 Overview of Research Design and Causal Inference

Brewer “Research Design and Issues of Validity” Ch. 1 in Reis and Judd

“Generalized Causal Interence: A Grounded Theory.” Ch. 11 in Shadish, Cook, and Campbell.

Marini, M. M., and B. Singer (1988). "Causality in the Social Sciences." Pp. 347-409 in Sociological Methodology 1988.

Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1173-1182.

Jan. 12 Experimental Design

Smith “Research Design” Ch. 2 in Reis and Judd

“Experiments and Generalized Causal Inference.” Ch. 1 in Shadish, Cook, and Campbell.

“Statistical Conclusion Validity and Internal Validity.” Ch. 2 in Shadish, Cook, and Campbell.

“Construct Validity and External Validity.” Ch. 3 in Shadish, Cook, and Campbell.

Jan. 19 Experimental Design (continued)

“Randomized Experiments: Rationale, Designs, and Conditions Conducive to Doing Them.” Ch. 8 in Shadish, Cook, and Campbell.

“Practical Problems 1: Ethics, Participant Recruitment, and Random Assignment.” Ch. 9 in Shadish, Cook, and Campbell.

“Practical Problems 2: Treatment Implementation and Attrition.” Ch. 10 in Shadish, Cook, and Campbell. Jan. 24* Experimental Design (continued)

Iyengar, S., Kinder, D. R., Peters, M. D., & Krosnick, J. A. (1984). The evening news and presidential evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 778-787.

Krosnick, J. A., Betz, A. L., Jussim, L. J., & Lynn, A. R. (1992). Subliminal conditioning of attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 152-162.

Snyder, M., Tanke, E. D. & Berscheid, E. (1977). Social perception and interpersonal behavior: On the self-fulfilling nature of social stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 656—666.

Devine, P. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5-18.

Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464- 1480

Jan. 26* Mediation and Moderation in Experiments

Miller, J. M., & Krosnick, J. A. (2000). News media impact on the ingredients of presidential evaluations: Politically knowledgeable citizens are guided by a trusted source. American Journal of Political Science, 44, 301-315.

Krosnick, J. A., Li, F., & Lehman, D. (1990). Conversational conventions, order of information acquisition, and the effect of base rates and individuating information on social judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 1140-1152.

Holbrook, A. L., Krosnick, J. A., Carson, R. T., & Mitchell, R. C. (2000). Violating conversational conventions disrupts cognitive processing of attitude questions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 36, 465- 494.

Holbrook, A. L., Berent, M. K., Krosnick, J. A., Visser, P. S., & Boninger, D. S. (in press). Attitude importance and the accumulation of attitude- relevant knowledge in memory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Jan. 31* Field Experiments

West, Biesanz, and Pitts “Causal Inference and Generalization in Field Settings: Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs. Ch. 3 in Reis and Judd

Miller, J. M., & Krosnick, J. A. (1998). The impact of candidate name order on election outcomes. Public Opinion Quarterly, 62, 291-330.

Gerber, Alan S., and Donald P. Green. 2000. The Effects of Canvassing, Direct Mail, and Telephone Contact on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment. American Political Science Review 94:653-63.

Protess, D. L., Cook, F. L., Curtin, T. R., Gordon, M. T., Leff, D. R., McCombs, M. E., & Miller, P. (1987). The impact if investigative reporting on public opinion and policymaking targeting toxic waste. Public Opinion Quarterly, 51, 166-185.

M. P. Stern, J. W. Farquhar, N. McCoby and S. H. Russell (1976). Results of a two-year health education campaign on dietary behavior. The Stanford Three Community Study. Circulation. 1976; 54(5): 826-33

N. Maccoby, J. W. Farquhar, P. D. Wood and J. Alexander. (1977). Reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease: effects of a community-based campaign on knowledge and behavior. Journal of Community Health. 1977; 3(2): 100-14

Cook, T.D., & Insko, C. A. (1968). Persistence of induced attitude change as a function of conclusion reexposure: A laboratory-field experiment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, 322-328.

Arthur V. Peterson Jr., Kathleen A. Kealey, Sue L. Mann, Patrick M. Marek, and Irwin G. Sarason. (2000). "Hutchinson Smoking Prevention Project: Long-Term Randomized Trial in School-Based Tobacco Use Prevention. Results on Smoking." Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Dec. 20, 2000, Volume 92, Number 24.

Greenwald, A. G., Carnot, C. G., Beach, R., & Young, B. (1987). Increasing voting behavior by asking people if they expect to vote. Journal of Applied Psychology, 72, 315-318.

Feb. 2* Quasi-Experiments “Quasi-Experimental Designs That Either Lack A Control Group or Lack Pretest Observations on the Outcome.” Ch. 4 in Shadish, Cook, and Campbell.

“Quasi-Experimental Designs that Use Both Control Groups and Pretests.” Ch. 5 in Shadish, Cook, and Campbell.

“Regression Discontinuity Designs. Ch. 7 in Shadish, Cook, and Campbell.

Feb. 7 Overview of Surveys

“The Nature of Survey Research.” Ch. 1 in Weisberg, Krosnick, and Bowen.

“The Survey Process.” Ch. 2 in Weisberg, Krosnick, and Bowen.

“Sampling Procedures.” Ch. 3 in Weisberg, Krosnick, and Bowen.

“The Data Collection Phase.” Ch. 5 in Weisberg, Krosnick, and Bowen.

Visser, Krosnick, and Lavrakas “Survey Research” Ch. 9 in Reis and Judd.

Feb. 9* Repeated Cross-Sectional Surveys and Experiments in Surveys

Krosnick, J. A., & Kinder, D. R. (1990). Altering the foundations of support for the president through priming. American Political Science Review, 84, 497-512.

Schuman, H., Steeh, C., and Bobo, L. (1985) Chapter 3 in Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Krosnick, J. A., Holbrook, A. L., & Visser, P. S. (2000). The impact of the Fall 1997 debate about global warming on American public opinion. Public Understanding of Science, 9, 239-260. (repeated cross sectional surveys)

Thomas Piazza and Paul M. Sniderman, 1998. "Incorporating Experiments into Computer Assisted Surveys," in Mick P. Couper, Reginald P. Baker, Jelke Bethlehem, Cynthia Z. F. Clark, Jean Martin, William L. Nicholls II, and James M. O'Reilly, Computer Assisted Survey Information Collection, New York, John Wiley and Sons. Kinder, Don and Lynn Sanders. 1990. Mimicking Political Debate with Survey Questions: The Case of White Opinion on Affirmative Action. Social Cognition. 8: 73 – 103.

Schwarz, N., & Clore, G.L. (1983). Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 513 - 523.

Holbrook, A. L., & Krosnick, J. A. (in preparation). Social desirability bias in voter turnout reporting: Tests using the list and randomized response techniques in telephone and internet surveys. Unpublished manuscript.

Feb. 14* Panel Surveys

Duncan, G. Mary Corcoran, Patricia Gurin and Gerald Gurin . (1985). Myth and Reality: The Causes and Persistence of Poverty" Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 4, No. 4, pp. 516-536.

Rahn, W. M., Krosnick, J. A., & Breuning, M. (1994). Rationalization and derivation processes in survey studies of political candidate evaluation. American Journal of Political Science, 38, 582-600.

Holbrook, A. L., Krosnick, J. A., Visser, P. S., Gardner, W. L., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2001). Attitudes toward presidential candidates and political parties: Initial optimism, inertial first impressions, and a focus on flaws. American Journal of Political Science, 45, 930-950. (repeated cross-sectional surveys and panel surveys)

Krosnick, J. A. (1990). Americans' perceptions of presidential candidates: A test of the projection hypothesis. Journal of Social Issues, 46, 159-182.

Feb. 16* Time Series Analysis

“Quasi-Experiments: Interrupted Time-Series Designs.” Ch. 6 in Shadish, Cook, and Campbell.

Iyengar, S., & Behr, R. "Television news, real-world cues, and changes in the public agenda”, Public Opinion Quarterly , 49, 1985, 38-57.

Phillips DP, Carstensen LL. Clustering of teenage suicide after television news stories about suicide. New England Journal of Medicine 1986; 685- 689. Phillips, D.P. (1974) "The Influence of Suggestion on Suicide: Substantive and Theoretical Implications of the Werther Effect" in American Sociological Review 39 (Jun): 340-354

Phillips, D.P. (1982) "The Impact of Fictional Television Stories on U.S. Adult Fatalities: New Evidence on the Effect of the Mass Media on Violence" in American Journal of Sociology 87 No. 6: 1340-1359.

Feb. 28* Meta-Analysis

“Generalized Causal Inference: Methods for Multiple Studies.” Ch. 13 in Shadish, Cook, and Campbell.

Johnson, B. T., & Eagly, A. H. (2000). Quantitative synthesis of social psychological research. In H. T. Reis & C. M. Judd (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology (pp. 496-528). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Johnson, B. T., & Eagly, A. H. (1989). The effects of involvement on persuasion: A metaanalysis. Psychological Bulletin, 106, 290-314.

Mar. 2 Measurement

John and Benet-Martinez. “Measurement: Reliability, construct validation, and scale construction.” Ch. 13 in Reis and Judd.

Krosnick, J. A, Judd, C. M., & Wittenbrink, B. (in press). Attitude measurement. In D. Albarracín, B. T. Johnson, & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Handbook of attitudes and attitude change. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Blascovich “Psychophysiological Methods” Ch. 5 in Reis and Judd

Reis and Gable “Event-Sampling and Other Methods for Studying Everyday Experience” Ch. 8 in Reis and Judd

Mar. 7 Measurement (continued)

Bakeman “Behavioral Observation and Coding” Ch. 6 in Reis and Judd

Bartholomew, Henderson, and Marcia “Coding Semistructured Interviews in Social Psychological Research” Ch. 11 in Reis and Judd.

“Coding Practices.” Ch. 6 in Weisberg, Krosnick, and Bowen. Smith “Content Analysis and Narrative Analysis.” Ch. 12 in Reis and Judd.

Mar. 9 Measurement (continued)

Hessing, D. J., Elffers, H., & Weigel, R. H. (1988). Exploring the limits of self-reports and reasoned action: An investigation of the psychology of tax evasion behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(3), 405-413.

Anderson DR, Field DE, Collins PA, Lorch EP, & Nathan JG. (1985) Estimates of young children's time with television: a methodological comparison of parent reports with time-lapse video home observation. Child Development, 56, 1345-57.

Webster, J. G., & Wakshlag, J. (1985). Measuring exposure to television. In D. Zillman & J. Bryant (Eds.), Selective exposure to communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Chang, L., & Krosnick, J. A. (2003). Measuring the frequency of regular behaviors: Comparing the ‘typical week’ to the ‘past week.’ Sociological Methodology, 33, 55-80.

Vavreck, L. (2004). The Dangers of Self-Reports of Political Behavior. Unpublished manuscript, UCLA.