Collaborative Research on the Intermediation Process and Political Decision Making

当代民主国家的公民学习政治， 政治决策主要基于 政治中间人，比如亲戚朋友，媒体， 和社会团体。 这项研究调查探讨了 1992年美国总统选举的调解过程。 研究人员采用混合研究设计， 一项密集的地方研究和一项全国性研究。 在当地的两个 和国家研究，将进行访谈， 公民和他们的私人讨论者。 的内容 他们阅读的报纸也将被分析。 当地的研究， 此外，还将包括对关键活动的审查， 社区中的次级组织以及它如何影响 公民 目前的调查与以前的调查不同， 调查工作，包括审查 中介机构，并在其融合公民的看法， 中介过程，直接从 中介自己。 此外，这项研究也是 一项五国合作的中介研究， 调查人员将美国的调查结果放在一个十字架上， 国家背景，从而确定 发达工业社会中的中介异常现象。 这项研究是几项中心研究的结合点 当代政治行为的问题，并将产生一个模型 描述了公民的 与政治世界的关系以及它如何影响自然 公民的选举决策。

Citizens in contemporary democracies learn about politics and make political decisions based largely on the information provided by political intermediaries, such as relatives and friends, the media, and social groups. This research investigation explores the intermediation process in the 1992 American presidential election. The investigators utilize a mixed research design which combines an intensive local study with a national study. In both the local and national studies, interviews will be conducted with a sample of citizens and their personal discussants. The content of the newspapers they read also will be analyzed. The local study, moreover, will include an examination of the activity of key secondary organizations in the community and how it impinges upon citizens. The current investigation is distinguished from prior investigations both in its examination of the full complement of intermediaries and in its merging of citizen perceptions of the intermediation process with information directly collected from the intermediaries themselves. In addition, this research is part of a collaborative five-nation study of intermediation that enables the investigators to place the American findings in a cross- national context, thereby identifying the regularities and anomalies of intermediation within advanced industrial societies. The study lies at the nexus of several of the central research issues of contemporary political behavior and will generate a model of the intermediation process that describes the citizen's relationship to the political world and how it affects the nature of citizen electoral decision making.