End of POL 312 Blog

I just wanted to say in my final blog that, although I personally have no idea what I am doing when it comes to "blogging", I really did enjoy having an opportunity to get some of the ideas and such that I found while researching out there for everyone to see. Hopefully, no one will judge me to harshly for what I've written here haha. I'm still trying to get my bearings on the whole blogging and public "speaking", whether that means orally or through the means of internet. Either way, I hope you enjoyed what I had to say! See ya!

Class Discussion

The last topic that I want to discuss is Measuring Political Trust. In class, we spent some time discussing different ways you can obtain from your respondent whether they have trust in their government. In class, we were offered 4 different questions that dealt with governmental trust. "How much confidence do you have in the government?", "Do you trust the government to do things right?", "Do you think the government is run for the benefit of all?", and "How well do you think the political process is working?" I found all of these questions to be very interesting. One poll I used within my research actually asked if the respondent felt that their government would handle the issue of illegal immigration with ease. I found this question to be fairly funny, considering its been an ongoing problem for so long, with no "ease" of handling by the government. Altogether, I guess most of these questions are questions you should most likely ask yourself everytime you are faced with a political issue. Do you think the government is run for the benefit of all?

Class Discussion

Here is another Blog Suggestion that was offered in class: "How has your issue figured into public opinion movements in presidential campaigns?" When I first started looking at this question, I figured that, as time passes, so do different topics and issues. Saying that, I, in some way, expected their to be quite a flucuation between the answers to different polls with respect to the administration or presidential campaign of the time. What I found was that numbers on immigration did not change much at all. Though the earliest I found immigration being the subject of a poll was 1986, I still figured that, with the few presidential campaigns and whatnot during 1986 to now, there would have been some big, and some little changes within polling. But I only found mainly small changes in the answering of questions. The bigger change that I found within polls was a switch from asking about immigration in general to certain subjects of immigration, illegal immigration being one.

Class Discussions

There was one topic that was brought up in class that I found EXTREMELY interesting. We spent a period discussing the concept of "Conflicted Conservatives". Although we did briefly discuss the concept of conflicted liberals, I felt that it was more important to discuss the conflicted conservatives, seeing as though most people answer questions more conservative. By this, I mean that most people, no matter whether they see themselves as a liberal or conservative, answer questions to a survey in a more conservative manner. To try and explain this, I will use a portion of notes from that lecture: "On average, the symbolic stance of a person is more conservative than their operational status."

Class Discussion

The next question I am about to present was actually in the form of a blog suggestion: "Do you feel James A. Stimson (author of our class text "Tides of Consent") should have covered your topic?" I also raised this question in a paper I wrote for class, also. I personally felt that Stimson should have definitely covered immigration in his text for this class. I feel that nowadays, immigration is one of the top issues in our country. Also, I found it a touch odd that Stimson did not even mention the realm of immigration when speaking of race in his book. Just a personal thought of mine, I guess.

Class Discussions

Here is another question that was presented in class which I found fairly interesting: "How does public opinion compare across different countries populations?" I took this question to mean public opinion when dealing with your topic. As I said a few posts back, I did not get a chance to really research in depth public polling done in other countries, but what I did find was not exactly "surprising". For the most part, other countries feel about the same way the United States tends to feel when speaking of immigration. There is usually a split between whether immigration is initially a good or bad thing for a nation. Those who see it as a bad thing usually bring up the problem of jobs being lost to immigrants, and those who see it as a good thing usually bring up the fact that immigrants can stimulate an economy.

Class discussions

I felt that the final part of my blog should incorporate more of some of the questions that were raised in class through lecture, so here we go. One question that I took note of was this; "To what extent is the sample, regardless of the size, reflective of the population?" Though the discussion I have to offer on this question is exactly "heavy", I still thought that it was an important enough question to raise. My answer to the question would be fairly simple. Size of the sample is irrelevant, as long as you have a fairly well-rounded, representative group. What I mean here is that a sample of 100,000 people of the same race, religion, age, etc. is much more useless than a sample of 10 people of all different categories of race, religion, age, etc.