ch 6 Public Opinion Textbook Q's

As a student of politics, being able to understand the results of public opinion polls means you

have tools to explain the behaviors of candidates and public officials.

Public opinion polls can be a reliable means of gauging what the public wants and believes; if you can understand such polls, you can better understand why politicians act the way they do

The relationship between stable and latent opinions is best explained by which statement?

Stable opinions are key in shaping the latent opinions that are developed on the spot.

Stable opinions include liberal or conservative ideology. Latent opinions are formed on the spot, such as when answering a survey question.

The consistent coherent sets of political attitudes and opinions held by Americans are most influenced by

social factors like family, region, and peer groups

One of the best predictors of a college student's party identification is the party ID of their parents.

When conducting a survey on presidential approval, judging if the country is going in the right direction or wrong direction, or preferences on which group is most capable of handling particular policy issues, it is most likely that the responses of survey participants will be based on which factor?

partisanship

For the most part, Americans base their evaluations on whether they share the president's party identification; other factors play a much smaller role.

A team of individuals seeking to find out what Americans believe about the state of the economy position themselves outside a large arena with the goal of gathering opinions from 1,000 attendees.

Why can you immediately dismiss the findings of this survey without knowing the outcome?

selection bias concerns

Because the team positioned themselves outside an arena, their sample was composed of the sort of people who go to arenas—sports fans, music fans, and the like, who might share common opinions—rather than a truly representative random sample.

Which sample groups and selection methods have the greatest likelihood of discovering the accurate measure of Americans' feelings about the performance of Congress?

1,050 citizens picked randomly through the use of random-digit dialing

For a sample to be accurate, it has to be as random as possible. Most people have phone numbers, so a scheme to dial random numbers is a good one. However, through this method, surveyors will miss out on people who don't have phones or choose not to answer them.

Scholars understand that popular portrayals of a sharply divided "red" and "blue" American electorate are misleading for which of the following reasons?

Less than one-quarter of Americans hold consistently liberal or conservative ideologies.

While most people generally lean one way or the other, only about one-fifth of the electorate hold consistent ideological beliefs. The other four-fifths express a mix of liberal and conservative issue positions.

A great dichotomy about the distrust many Americans have toward our government and institutions is that

Americans regularly show strong support for many individual government programs.

While a majority of people believe government programs as a whole are usually wasteful and inefficient, they do support specific government programs, such as keeping the country safe from terrorism.