Political Science 161

Study Questions for Bardes, et al., Ch. 6

1. What are the pros and cons of requiring students to pass a national civics exam?

2. Give a couple of examples when public opinion clearly seemed to affect the government’s actions.

3. What is public opinion? Distinguish between consensus opinion and divisive opinion.

4. What is political socialization? What are the agents of political socialization? What are some other factors that can influence an individual’s opinion? Describe the ways in which the attitudes of females tend to be different from males according to recent surveys. What are some election-specific factors in how people vote?

5. Why did the Literary Digest poll go so wrong in predicting the results of the 1936 presidential election? What is a random (or probability) sample? Give some examples of probability samples. Which is generally more important to keeping sampling error minimized: the size of a sample or the method of selection of the sample?

6. Why do even probability polls go wrong in predicting public opinion? Describe how the wording of a sample survey may influence the results of the survey. What is a push poll?

7. What are some important problems with telephone polls? Discuss the problems with getting an accurate poll over the Internet.

8. What are some important values of the American political culture? What were the three most trusted American institutions in 2006 according to Gallup? What were the three least trusted? How responsive is the national government to the public’s demands for action according to a study by Page and Shapiro?

9. Discuss how to be a critical consumer of opinion polls.