Student evaluations of teaching are widely believed to contain gender bias. In this study, we conduct a randomized experiment with the student evaluations of teaching in four classes with large ...enrollments, two taught by male instructors and two taught by female instructors. In each of the courses, students were randomly assigned to either receive the standard evaluation instrument or the same instrument with language intended to reduce gender bias. Students in the anti-bias language condition had significantly higher rankings of female instructors than students in the standard treatment. There were no differences between treatment groups for male instructors. These results indicate that a relatively simple intervention in language can potentially mitigate gender bias in student evaluation of teaching.
The Dynamic American Dream Wolak, Jennifer; Peterson, David A. M.
American journal of political science,
10/2020, Volume:
64, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The American Dream is central to the national ethos, reflecting people's optimism that all who are willing to work hard can achieve a better life than their parents. Separate from the support for the ...idea of the American Dream itself is whether the public believes it is attainable. We consider the origins and dynamics of the public's belief in the achievability of the American Dream. Is the American Dream a symbolic vision, rooted in political socialization rather than contemporary politics? Or does optimism about the American Dream follow from the viability of the dream, rising with economic prosperity and falling with declining opportunity? We develop a new macrolevel measure of belief in the American Dream from 1973 to 2018. We show that it moves over time, responsive to changes in social mobility, income inequality, and economic perceptions. As inequality increases, belief in the attainability of the American Dream declines.
Dear Reviewer 2: Go F’ Yourself Peterson, David A. M.
Social science quarterly,
July 2020, 2020-07-00, 20200701, Volume:
101, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Objectives
The objective of this study was to empirically test the wide belief that Reviewer #2 is a uniquely poor reviewer.
Methods
The test involved analyzing the reviewer database from Political ...Behavior. There are two main tests. First, the reviewer's categorical evaluation of the manuscript was compared by reviewer number. Second, the data were analyzed to test if Reviewer #2 was disproportionately likely to be more than one category below the mean of the other reviewers of the manuscript.
Results
There is no evidence that Reviewer #2 is either more negative about the manuscript or out of line with the other reviewers. There is, however, evidence that Reviewer #3 is more likely to be more than one category below the other reviewers.
Conclusions
Reviewer #2 is not the problem. Reviewer #3 is. In fact, he is such a bad actor that he even gets the unwitting Reviewer #2 blamed for his bad behavior.
Abstract Background Limited literature exists on the association between medication adherence and outcomes among patients with heart failure. Methods and Results We conducted a retrospective ...longitudinal cohort study of 557 patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) (defined by EF <50%) in a large health maintenance organization. We used multivariable Cox proportional hazards models to assess the relationship between adherence (with angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers, β-blockers, and aldosterone antagonists) and the primary outcome of all-cause mortality plus cardiovascular hospitalizations. Mean follow-up time was 1.1 years. Nonadherence (defined as <80% adherence) was associated with a statistically significant increase in the primary outcome in the cohort overall (hazard ratio 2.07, 95% confidence interval 1.62–2.64; P < .0001). This association remained significant when all 3 classes of heart failure medications and the components of the composite end point were considered separately and when the adherence threshold was varied to 70% or 90%. Conclusions Medication nonadherence was associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular hospitalizations in a community heart failure population. Further research is needed to define systems of care that optimize adherence among patients with heart failure.
Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) has gained popularity in recent years for rapid bacterial identification, mostly at the genus or species ...level. In this study, a rapid method to identify the Escherichia coli flagellar antigen (H antigen) at the subspecies level was developed using a MALDI-TOF MS platform with high specificity and sensitivity. Flagella were trapped on a filter membrane, and on-filter trypsin digestion was performed. The tryptic digests of each flagellin then were collected and analyzed by MALDI-TOF MS through peptide mass fingerprinting. Sixty-one reference strains containing all 53 H types and 85 clinical strains were tested and compared to serotyping designations. Whole-genome sequencing was used to resolve conflicting results between the two methods. It was found that DHB (2,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid) worked better than CHCA (α-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid) as the matrix for MALDI-TOF MS, with higher confidence during protein identification. After method optimization, reference strains representing all 53 E. coli H types were identified correctly by MALDI-TOF MS. A custom E. coli flagellar/H antigen database was crucial for clearly identifying the E. coli H antigens. Of 85 clinical isolates tested by MALDI-TOF MS-H, 75 identified MS-H types (88.2%) matched results obtained from traditional serotyping. Among 10 isolates where the results of MALDI-TOF MS-H and serotyping did not agree, 60% of H types characterized by whole-genome sequencing agreed with those identified by MALDI-TOF MS-H, compared to only 20% by serotyping. This MALDI-TOF MS-H platform can be used for rapid and cost-effective E. coli H antigen identification, especially during E. coli outbreaks.
Measurement in the social sciences involves assigning values to particular empirical cases and plays a vital role in the research process, but it can be tricky to teach. Unless an undergraduate ...social sciences research methods course includes the collection of original data, many of the issues of measurement can seem abstract and arcane to students. To help illustrate how a social science researcher goes from a conceptualization to assigning values to cases, I developed a lecture that centers on the question "which artists are one-hit wonders?" I used the rules developed by Chris Molanphy to help students see how we can develop applicable methods for any possible case and make a measure that is both reliable and valid. The example also helps illustrate the difference between categorical and numerical variables by comparing the categorization of artists as one-hit wonders and the relative numerical value of the chart position of the artist's most successful song.
Empathic ability is the ability to interpret the emotional state of others. In today's highly partisan and polarized environment, empathic ability may play a key role in determining how partisans ...respond emotionally to changes in public policy and those helped or harmed by the policy. Utilizing Baron‐Cohen et al.'s (Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 241–251, 2001) “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test to measure empathic ability, we conduct a survey experiment where we asked participants to read about a partisan individual who may lose their health insurance if the Affordable Care Act were to be repealed. We show that empathic ability shapes attitudes about people and policies, but that the effects are contingent upon the respondent's partisanship, the target's partisanship, and an interaction of the two. Empathic ability produces more positive affect and policy support among Democrats but reduces positive affect among Republicans. The divergent effects of empathic ability on Democrats and Republicans are further exacerbated when the target is an out‐partisan.
How political actors choose which politics to focus on helps shape the outcome of the policy process. While the policy agenda of the federal government has received widespread attention, there is ...much less known about the policy agendas of the U.S. states. In this paper, we describe how and why states choose to have similar agendas. We rely on the Twitter activity of every state legislator in America to measure the attention that states pay to the categories developed in the Policy Agenda Project (PAP). We develop machine learning tools to measure the proportion of tweets from every state legislature from 2017 in each of the PAP policy topics. Our results show that states that the public‐facing policy agenda of a state legislature is correlated with the level of legislative professionalism and the partisan and ideological politics of the state. These results further our understanding of state policymaking and agenda setting.
Resumen
La forma en que los actores políticos eligen en qué política enfocarse ayuda a dar forma al resultado del proceso de formulación de políticas. Si bien la agenda de políticas del gobierno federal ha recibido una atención generalizada, se sabe mucho menos sobre las agendas de políticas de los estados de EE. UU. En este documento, describimos cómo y por qué los estados eligen tener agendas similares. Confiamos en la actividad de Twitter de todos los legisladores estatales de Estados Unidos para medir la atención que los estados prestan a las categorías desarrolladas en el Proyecto de Agenda de Políticas (PAP). Desarrollamos herramientas de aprendizaje automático para medir la proporción de tweets de cada legislatura estatal desde 2017 en los temas de política de PAP. Nuestros resultados muestran que los estados que la agenda política de cara al público de una legislatura estatal está correlacionada con el nivel de profesionalismo legislativo y la política ideológica y partidista del estado. Estos resultados amplían nuestra comprensión de la formulación de políticas estatales y el establecimiento de la agenda.
摘要
政治行动者如何对哪些政治加以关注一事会影响政策过程的结果。虽然联邦政府的政策议程受到广泛关注，但很少有研究聚焦于美国各州的政策议程。本文中，我们描述了各州如何以及为何选择相似的议程。我们基于美国各州立法者的推特活动来衡量各州对政策议程计划(PAP)中制定的类别的关注程度。我们开发了机器学习工具来衡量从2017年起各州立法机构的推文在PAP政策主题中的比例。我们的研究结果表明，州立法机构面向公众的政策议程，与立法专业水平、州党派政治以及意识形态政治相关。这些结果加深了我们对州政策制定和议程设置的理解。
Given that political interest is one of the best predictors of political participation, it remains curious that the causes of interest are undertheorized and understudied. Notably absent from much of ...the research on political interest is an exploration of how variations in the nature of politics itself might have an impact on individual-level political interest. We develop a theory and a set of testable predictions about how partisanship interacts with the presence of a presidential (vs. midterm) election, the party of the sitting president, and elite polarization, to affect political interest. We report multilevel models that use ANES measures of political interest and partisanship and the DW-NOMINATE Senate polarization measure (from 1960 to 2008) and discuss the implications of our findings for the long-term prospects of an interested electorate.
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