Deck 5: Public Opinion: How Are Americans Voices Measured, and Do They Matter

Question 1

Which of the following questions is central to measuring public opinion?

A) Are the measurements actually collecting individual beliefs and attitudes?
B) Are individual beliefs and attitudes somehow different than their aggregate?
C) Is the aggregate collection accounting for differences in individual beliefs and attitudes?
D) Does the aggregate sum of "public opinion" constitute a meaningful communication or just noise?

Answer 1

D

Question 2

The sum of individual attitudes about government, policies, and issues is referred to as a ______.

A) public opinion
B) personal opinion
C) mass opinion
D) private opinion

Answer 2

A

Question 3

A systematic attempt to make inferences about the opinions of large numbers of individuals by carefully sampling and asking questions of a small, randomly assigned sample of the larger population is called ______.

A) an opinion poll
B) a public poll
C) a public opinion survey
D) a public poll survey

Answer 3

C

Question 4

In 2013, Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Florida by whom?

A) Darren Wilson
B) Michael Brown
C) George Zimmerman
D) John Crawford

Question 5

Based on data collected by the Pew Research Center following Michael Brown's death, what percentage of African Americans felt that his death raised important issues about race?

A) 80%
B) 37%
C) 47%
D) 12%

Question 6

Information is a central part of representative government because ______.

A) candidate access to political information is essential
B) government control of information is critical
C) citizens must have some knowledge of what their elected representatives are up to
D) public information is of value to any governmental institution

Question 7

In the weeks following the Michael Brown shooting, protesters were calling for ______.

A) the release of autopsy results
B) the prosecution of the officer who shot Mr. Brown
C) the release of Mr. Brown's personal effects
D) the release of dash cam video of the encounter

Question 8

American public opinion is difficult to understand because individuals ______.

A) always have hidden preferences
B) may not actually have meaningful preferences
C) may have unexpressed preferences and attitudes
D) may not understand the public opinion process

Question 9

Immediately following the death of Michael Brown, the Pew Research Center organized a survey by ______.

A) conducting a random sample of 1,000 American adults using landlines and cell phones
B) posting a self-selected survey on a public internet site titled DoBlackLivesMatter.org
C) going to Ferguson and personally interviewing more than 2,000 active protesters
D) recording the opinions of callers who responded on local talk radio programs

Question 10

In Staten Island, New York, Eric Garner was killed when ______.

A) police shot him at a traffic stop
B) police placed him in a chokehold
C) his vehicle left the road and crashed into a police car
D) he was struck by a police vehicle in pursuit of a suspect

Question 11

Which of the following best explains the assumptions of constituency?

A) Voters have attitudes, and those attitudes are expressed through political action.
B) The public has knowledge assets, and those assets are expressed through representative activation.
C) Candidates need political information, and the value of political information can be measured.
D) Constituents have preferences and attitudes that can be meaningfully expressed and measured.

Question 12

Based on data collected by the Pew Research Center following Michael Brown's death, which group felt more strongly that issues about race were finally being raised?

A) African Americans
B) whites
C) Latinos
D) Asian Americans

Question 13

Many observers could interpret the events of Ferguson, along with the August 5 shooting of John Crawford and the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., as evidence of ______.

A) escalating black-on-black violence
B) renewed white-on-black hatred
C) systemic police mistreatment of blacks
D) continuous black-on-white crimes

Question 14

In August of 2015, Michael Brown was killed by police officers in what city?

A) Orlando, Fla.
B) Ferguson, Mo.
C) Dayton, Ohio
D) Staten Island, N.Y.

Question 15

Which of the following best defines public opinion?

A) the sum of individual attitudes about governmental policies and issues
B) a representative sampling of public attitudes and opinions
C) the feelings and attitudes of an individual respondent
D) the results of a brief political poll conducted by a single candidate

Question 16

One of the most interesting and important debates about American public opinion is ______.

A) the value of public opinion in governmental decisions
B) whether public opinion actually exists
C) the validity of public opinion in political races
D) how to accurately measure public opinion among young adults

Question 17

By 2015, how had the national conversation changed?

A) Public opinion on the issue of police-citizen interactions had shifted.
B) Black Lives Matter had become the center of attention in southern states.
C) White citizens had changed their perspective to that of the protesters.
D) Many black citizens ceased supporting the Black Lives Matter group.

Question 18

This chapter focused on American public opinion in which of the following specific areas?

A) successful election of ethnic minorities in governmental situations
B) treatment of young African American men by law enforcement officials
C) educational pursuits of young men and women on college campuses
D) public reaction to large social movements such as Black Lives Matter

Question 19

The protests in Ferguson, Mo., were centrally concerned with ______.

A) immigration policies in America
B) state policies regarding firearm ownership
C) incarceration of Latinos under the nation's strict gun laws
D) the treatment of African American males by police officers

Question 20

John Crawford was shot and killed inside of a Walmart in Dayton, Ohio, in 2014 by ______.

A) a neighborhood watchman
B) his next door neighbor
C) police officers
D) himself in an accident

Question 21

An individual's identification with a particular ______ is a powerful informational shortcut for voters in order to evaluate candidates and form opinions about them.

A) political attitude
B) social movement
C) political party
D) political campaign

Question 22

Which of the following refers to the systematic attempts to make inferences about the opinions of large numbers of individuals by carefully sampling and asking questions to a small, randomly assigned sample of the larger population?

A) public opinion surveys
B) straw polls
C) self-selected listener opinion polls
D) exit polls

Question 23

What two camps do arguments about the meaning of public opinion fall into?

A) (1) The average citizen either doesn't have or is unable to express meaningful opinion, and (2) even though they may lack sufficient political information, citizens can find ways to work around their lack of information through friends, institutions, and partisanship.
B) (1) The average citizen possesses sufficient political information, and (2) political information can be expressed and fluidly changed over time.
C) (1) Citizens seek to be educated about political information, and (2) it is the responsibility of a democratic republic to educate and indoctrinate its citizens with political information.
D) (1) Citizens lack political knowledge, and (2) the lack of political knowledge creates a barrier to effective government.

Question 24

The degree of change over time in response to differently worded survey questions or in different contexts of a particular opinion is defined as ______.

A) direction
B) intensity
C) stability
D) salience

Question 25

Which of the following best describes the minimalist paradigm?

A) Individuals have sufficient political knowledge to vote and take political action.
B) People have insufficient capacity to acquire political knowledge and cannot make rational political decisions.
C) Most people fall short of what we expect them to know, think about, and pay attention to in the complicated world of politics and policy.
D) Most citizens do not need to acquire political information or civic education, and governments run with minimal interaction from their citizenry.

Question 26

The small number of Americans who have well-informed and well-reasoned opinions is known as ______.

A) elites
B) masses
C) politicos
D) partisans

Question 27

Lippmann described a public that is ______.

A) highly reflective and averse to efforts that might change their opinions
B) intensely interactive and fluidly reactive to change
C) moderately reflective and lacking sufficient levels of information to be of value
D) dangerously unreflective and vulnerable to attempts to shape our opinions

Question 28

The strength of individual involvement and preference is defined as ______.

A) direction
B) intensity
C) stability
D) salience

Question 29

Which of the following best describes a term referring to the lack of stable and coherent opinions on political issues and candidates?

A) stereotype
B) attitude
C) nonattitude
D) knowledge

Question 30

What was a key concept in Walter Lippmann's research?

A) stereotype
B) constituency
C) elites
D) consideration

Question 31

Philip E. Converse found that ______.

A) elites serve as models for mass behavior
B) masses do not learn from elites
C) elites filter political knowledge to masses
D) mass behavior lacks a level of education

Question 32

Researchers with the Pew Center periodically administer an instrument called ______, which is a test administered to random samples of Americans with questions covering political figures and current issues.

A) Poli Quest
B) News Quest
C) News IQ
D) Pro News

Question 33

Which component of individual opinion is the common focus of political experts?

A) direction
B) intensity
C) stability
D) salience

Question 34

Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro contend that public opinion is a ______ phenomenon.

A) partisan
B) individual
C) aggregate
D) collective

Question 35

Inherent in the minimalist critique is the idea that ______.

A) Americans lack any relevant amount of political information
B) not all Americans have the same amount of political information
C) all Americans have equal access to and knowledge of political information
D) political information contains no value and is irrelevant to the political process

Question 36

Some political scientists have emphasized the possibility of the ______ in which individuals, imperfectly informed, can come up with meaningful assessments of problems and situations.

A) wisdom of crowds
B) social effect
C) group learning process
D) random sampling effect

Question 37

A combination of cognition and affect that contributes to any one answer to any one question or evaluation is defined as ______.

A) assumption
B) consideration
C) stereotype
D) aggregation

Question 38

Which term best describes a preconceived, often oversimplified idea about something, which people apply as a filter to the world?

A) stereotype
B) attitude
C) opinion
D) observation

Question 39

One of the earliest and most influential advocates of the minimalist argument was ______.

A) Christopher Achen
B) Walter Lippmann
C) Phillip E. Converse
D) Robert Shapiro

Question 40

The majority of individuals who lack necessary levels of political information are described as ______.

A) elites
B) masses
C) politicos
D) partisans

Question 41

Which term describes a political tool that gives elected officials broader knowledge of the overall preferences of the citizens as a whole?

A) straw polling
B) scientific polling
C) elections
D) census taking

Question 42

In 1980, television networks were releasing their presidential predictions after the polls had closed on the East Coast. Which of the following would be a major criticism of this decision?

A) Exit polls in other areas had yet to be tabulated and were not inclusive.
B) Exit polls were not predictively accurate enough to be of any use.
C) This action could influence voters in other time zones around the country.
D) Exit polling is seen as a disruption of the voting process and is illegal.

Question 43

Which of the following is a problem inherent to straw polls?

A) They are subject to self-selection bias.
B) Their target population is not randomly selected.
C) Interview bias can impact their outcome.
D) Question selection is often difficult.

Question 44

A sociologist at George Washington University pointed out that one incident on its own might not move American public opinion, but a(n) ______ of these incidents might certainly shift public opinion.

A) critical mass
B) small number
C) isolated few
D) rising number

Question 45

Pollsters are likely to use weighting in which of the following situations?

A) when observed results need to be adjusted according to what is known about specific proportions from the larger population
B) when observed results are equivalent to what is known about specific proportions from the larger population
C) in all randomly selected sampling situations involving large populations of American citizens
D) this technique is rarely used, as it carries with it a set of sampling errors and other biases

Question 46

A system through which citizens communicate with their elected officials through phone calls, emails, or personal visits would best be described as which of the following?

A) census taking
B) indirect communication
C) constituent polling
D) direct communication

Question 47

A political candidate wishes to get immediate feedback as to how voters are casting their ballots in an election. Which of the following types of surveys would he/she most likely select?

A) self-selected listener opinion polling
B) random-digit dialing
C) exit polling
D) straw polling

Question 48

For the majority of questions of public policy with which elected officials will have to contend, elections are too ______ to reveal useful information.

A) narrow in scope
B) focused on candidates
C) broad a tool
D) focused on voter preferences

Question 49

The main problem with scientific polling is one of ______.

A) administration
B) construction
C) sampling
D) administration

Question 50

Immediately following the protests in Ferguson, many white residents commented that Mr. Brown's death ______.

A) revealed racial tensions they had not realized were there
B) uncovered a well-hidden system of ongoing and purposeful racism
C) described the true extent to which racism had been addressed
D) aggravated the already existing racist tendencies of white citizens

Question 51

Those individuals who participate on your survey are known as ______.

A) respondents
B) participants
C) subjects
D) members

Question 52

A key challenge to sampling is one of ______.

A) self-selection
B) random selection
C) instrument construction
D) participant selection

Question 53

In order to obtain a random yet representative sample with minimal cost, many pollsters use which of the following tools?

A) self-selected listener opinion polling
B) straw polls
C) exit polls
D) random-digit dialing

Question 54

A poll conducted several months after Mr. Brown's shooting found that large majorities of Americans expressed support for the use of ______ by law enforcement to record their interactions with people.

A) personal logs
B) body cameras
C) increased paperwork
D) dash cams

Question 55

One tool in which candidates assemble small groups of individuals for a directed conversation in which they hope to uncover patterns of thinking about issues and individuals is the ______.

A) focus group
B) political survey
C) self-selected opinion poll
D) random sampling

Question 56

A random sampling has been taken from a normally distributed American population of respondents with 60% white, 30% black, 10% Hispanic, 50% male, and 50% female. The sample contains the following characteristics: 90% white, 10% black, 0% Hispanic, 50% male, and 50% female. This sampling is likely to contain which of the following sampling errors?

A) oversampling of black respondents
B) undersampling of male respondents
C) oversampling of white respondents
D) undersampling of Hispanic respondents

Question 57

The president's role in focusing Americans' attention on specific issues and events and in making sense of tragedies and challenges is referred to as being the chief ______.

A) executive
B) communicator
C) of state
D) diplomat

Question 58

Which term represents the centrality of an individual's opinion in the sense of its ability to shape their views on other issues or candidate evaluations?

A) direction
B) intensity
C) stability
D) salience

Question 59

What is the goal of scientific polling?

A) maximize uncertainty while maximizing cost
B) minimize uncertainty while maximizing cost
C) minimize uncertainty while minimizing cost
D) maximize uncertainty while minimizing cost

Question 60

A political candidate has constructed a survey instrument and intends to administer it to a randomly selected sampling of respondents who are divided by geographic region, political party membership, age, gender, and ethnicity. This would be an example of a ______.

A) scientific poll
B) self-selected opinion poll
C) straw poll
D) census instrument

Question 61

Which of the following may intentionally, or unintentionally, guide respondents to a specific answer?

A) question wording
B) intensity of the interviewer
C) when the poll is taken
D) how the poll is weighted

Question 62

Question order is important in survey construction because ______.

A) the sequencing of questions can influence answers
B) the construction of question types influences survey outcome
C) some questions are easier to understand than others
D) more salient questions should be placed at the end of the survey

Question 63

Which political party, based on the modern usage of the term, refers to support for an especially strong role for the government in economic matters, including advocating for governmental control over entire sectors of the economy, such as health care?

A) libertarianism
B) socialism
C) conservatism
D) liberalism

Question 64

Which of the following is considered a negative campaign tactic rather than a truly reflective poll?

A) straw poll
B) random digit dialing
C) self-selected listener opinion poll
D) push poll

Question 65

Party identification is highly transmitted through which of the following?

A) peer groups
B) families
C) employers
D) schools

Question 66

Which of the following polling techniques should be viewed more as a negative campaign tactic than a legitimate source of data?

A) exit poll
B) scientific poll
C) random digit dialing polls
D) push polls

Question 67

American women are more likely to identify and vote for Democratic Party candidates than men, who are more likely to vote for Republican Party candidates. This represents the ______ in American politics.

A) linked fate
B) gender gap
C) partisan polarization
D) political ideology

Question 68

When the race or ethnicity of respondents and interviewers impacts the outcome of a survey, political scientists refer to this as ______.

A) race-of-interviewer effect
B) racial discrimination
C) interviewer bias
D) respondent bias

Question 69

Civic education aims to introduce citizens to politics and helps them develop the ability to interpret and make sense of civic knowledge; where do citizens obtain their formal civic education from?

A) families
B) schools
C) social media
D) friends

Question 70

An academic political researcher would be more apt to use which of the following poll types in order to obtain reliable information?

A) random-digit dialing in which calls are placed to landlines and cell phones
B) scientific surveys with randomly selected respondents and multiple random survey instruments
C) internet-based polling of large numbers of respondents with little respondent filtering
D) well-designed exit polls administered in a particular set of purposely selected

Question 71

Which of the following prevents elected representatives from consistently bending to the will of the voters?

A) Elections are only held every few years.
B) There are many roadblocks to making major changes to American public policy.
C) Impeachments are hard to pass through a legislative body.
D) Amendments to the Constitution require unanimous voting to be passed.

Question 72

Which of the following plays the most important role in conveying civic education?

A) peer groups
B) families
C) employers
D) schools

Question 73

Which of the following refers to the variety of experiences and factors that shape our political values, attitudes, and behaviors?

A) party identification
B) political socialization
C) civic education
D) political ideology

Question 74

Which political party, based on the modern usage of the term, refers to support for more robust governmental action to ensure equality of opportunity, particularly in regulation of the economy as well as environmental regulation?

A) libertarianism
B) socialism
C) conservatism
D) liberalism

Question 75

Random-digit dialing carries which of the following possible errors?

A) sampling
B) interviewer
C) wording
D) tabulation

Question 76

The degree to which an individual identifies with and supports a particular political party is known as ______.

A) political socialization
B) party identification
C) civic education
D) political ideology

Question 77

Which political party, based on the modern usage of the term, refers to support for a reduced role for the government and an emphasis on individual liberty, especially in economic matters?

A) libertarianism
B) socialism
C) conservatism
D) liberalism

Question 78

A person's beliefs about political goals, public policies, and acts that shape political choices is known as ______.

A) political ideology
B) political socialization
C) civic education
D) party identification

Question 79

The fact that members of Congress are increasingly voting with members of their own party has become a factor in ______.

A) socialism
B) political ideology
C) partisan polarization
D) the gender gap

Question 80

Which political party, based on the modern usage of the term, refers to support for an emphasis on individual liberty and argues that governmental involvement in the lives of Americans should be as minimal as possible?

A) libertarianism
B) socialism
C) conservatism
D) liberalism