Assignment # 1 - Public Opinion Analysis

A.T. U.S. Government and Politics

Due:

Assignment # 1 - Public Opinion Analysis

Recently each of you completed a survey in which you answered questions about your attitudes and beliefs on a variety of political, economic and social issues. The questions you answered were not ones that I wrote. All of them in fact have been asked of the American public in recent months by pollsters working for news organizations like CNN/USA Today, NBC News/Wall Street Journal, CBS News/New York Times, and ABC News/Washington Post. Presented side-by-side elsewhere on this web site are the questions, the answers offered by the general public and the aggregated responses of your class.

Please understand that the "general public" represents the best efforts of professional public opinion pollsters to collect a random sample (usually a few thousand) of opinions that will reflect (within a small "margin of error") how the entire adult population of the United States would have responded had they been asked the same questions. In putting together their sample, pollsters hope to mirror the extraordinary diversity in the United States. This means that they endeavor to account for differences in age, race, religion, gender, geographic region, level of income, employment status, level of education and so on. You should, therefore, when examining those responses to the survey questions consider the general public to be a representative sample of the U.S. adult population. Those are the people you are comparing your own answers to.

Your task is to write a brief essay analyzing this survey data. Your essay should do three things:

Identify four areas where you notice a clear disparity ("disparity", in this case, meaning at least a fifteen to twenty point difference) between the way students in this class responded and the way the American public responded to the same question. Note that the assignment mentions four "areas", not necessarily "four questions".

For each of the four areas you select, analyze and explain the disparity. No reading or research is called for here. In fact I would ask that you do no research for this assignment at all. Just use your logic, common sense, and knowledge of American history and American culture to answer the question “Why were the responses of students in this class often so different from the responses of the broader American public?” As you do so you will need to consider the implicit underlying question: "Where do I and where do others (my peers, other Americans) acquire our political and moral values and attitudes?" Be sure to discuss, for each disparity, not only the views of Scarsdale students but those of the general public as well. Please do not restate or reiterate the wording of the questions you are discussing (or the answers and statistical results for that matter) in your paper itself. Instead, simply refer to the question by its number.

Those who are skeptical of the accuracy of a poll might argue that public opinion pollsters can accidentally or deliberately slant the results of a survey (or produce an inaccurate result) simply by the way they ask a question. Assume for the sake of argument that the skeptics are correct. Find two questions in the survey that you didn't like, not because of the subject matter but because you thought it was poorly or confusingly worded.So poorly in fact that were it worded differently, it might have produced a different response, from the public or your class. Devote a final body paragraph of your essay to a discussion of these two questions which should include an explanation of why you found them problematic and a rephrased version of the question that you think rectifies the problem.

DUE DATE AND PAGE LENGTH

This paper is due via Turnitin.com by midnight on Friday, September 25, 2015.

While you will not be penalized for including an introduction or a conclusion I do not - unless there is something exceptional or egregious - plan to grade them.

Your paper should be around 1,500 words long but you should not be overly concerned with that exact number. Focus on the depth and quality of your analysis instead.I will evaluate it based on how well and how thoughtfully you write it.

Be sure to proofread. A paper that is poorly or carelessly written or edited will receive a lower grade.

VERY IMPORTANT TIPS ON HOW TO ACTUALLY WRITE YOUR ESSAY

Students often find that the easiest way to write this paper is to begin the process not by picking questions to analyze but rather by devoting some time to brainstorming the many ways in which the two groups of respondents - "AT Gov Students" and the "General Public" are different and then, with that brainstormed list in hand, reviewing the survey results, "matching up" areas of disparity in the responses with some of the items on that brainstormed list which seem to explain that disparity. If you take that approach I would strongly suggest that each of the four body paragraphs of your paper begin with a different "brainstormed disparity" (as a topic sentence) and continue to the identification, discussion, and analysis of the responses you believe that disparity explains.

Do not spend any time whatsoever restating the question or the responses. I was the person who provided you with the questions and reported to you what the responses were. Repeating that information back to me makes it look like you are unable to write 1,500 words of thoughtful analysis and are seeking to "fill space" and lengthen the paper to reach that goal. Instead, when discussing an area of disparity simply type the number of the question(s) you are referring to in parentheses in a relevant section of your paper. For example: "(Q43)"

The use of the first person (in describing why you think a disparity exists) and of the word "we" (in suggesting why AT Gov students likely have the views and attitudes they do) is absolutely appropriate for this assignment.

LATENESS PENALTY - I will deduct a half-grade (weekends included, late papers can always be submitted via email) for each day this paper is late.

SEE ME - While there are always a handful of exceptions each year, I can say with great confidence that it is overwhelmingly true that the students who do best in my classes are the ones who use me as a resources and actively seek me out for help. Start now! Access the "sign up sheet" that I have posted outside of my office and reserve a time to meet with me to discuss your essay and hopefully show me how you have gotten started writing it.