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Hypothetical Study For This Tutorial
This tutorial expands on the concepts and operations demonstrated in the Level 1 tutorial by turning that study into an online experiment embedded in a public opinion survey. The hypothesis being explored is that positions on public opinions are more consistent across issues when a mental "cue" (or "brand name") is added as a preamble to each question in the survey. The cue used in this study is the name of the political party most associated with the policies about which opinions are asked. Example:
"The Republican Party has put into law a plan to cut taxes. Experts agree that the plan has a 75 percent chance of creating many new jobs this year. But Democrats point out that even if the plan works, it will greatly increase the national debt and thus hurt future generations. Do you support or oppose the tax cut?"
The "Treatment" in this study is the party cue embedded in the question. The control or comparison is the same question without the party cue. One group of randomly selected respondents (treatment group) has the cues embedded in the questions, while another group (control group) does not. Only two political issues are studied in this way, but this will demonstrate how the effects of these cues on opinion consistency can be detected. This study will be called "Effects of Party Cues on Opinion Consistency."
This demonstration of a self-administered online experiment is patterned after a study by Michael Tomz and Paul M. Sniderman, Standford University reported in an article entitled Constraint in Mass Belief Systems: Political Brand Names as Signals, (August 2004), prepared for delivery at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 2 - December 5, 2004.