Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Legislators' Perceptions and Representation in Congress

二十多年前，Fenno（1978）呼吁人们注意他所谓的“代表-选区关系学生面临的关键问题”。.感知的问题。“更具体地说，芬诺指出了像立法者那样看待选区的重要性。换句话说，“当一个当选代表看到一个选区时，他或她看到了什么。“（Fenno 1978）。这个博士论文研究项目解决了这个问题，并采用了认知和社会心理学的理论来发展一个更完整的国会代表理论。该项目集中在立法者的概念，他们的选民的方式受到限制的可用性启发式（特沃斯基和卡尼曼1974）。虽然政治科学家在研究公众舆论时经常引用心理学理论，但这些理论很少在政治精英的背景下进行研究。代表权的部分任务要求立法者决定该地区谁对某个问题感兴趣。 学生认为，可用性启发式提供了重要的洞察立法者的看法，他们的地区。在对选区利益作出判断时，立法者并不使用所有相关信息，而是依赖于相关信息的一个子集。那些更容易接触到的利益（无论是有组织的还是无组织的）更有可能被包括在立法者对该地区在特定问题上的利益的看法中。在这篇论文中，学生检查选择性知觉，并认为这个问题的答案需要考虑的可用性启发式。调查的中心问题是，如何解释立法者的感知差异？这位学生提出，任何对这个问题的回答都必须考虑到政治科学文献中的许多假设，并结合认知心理学的理论。这是后一个问题，构成了这个项目的实证重点的大部分。学生的方法的问题，谁的立法者认为是一个给定的问题，通过关注美国众议院的现任成员和他们的立法工作人员的利益群体的一部分。由于研究是针对具体问题的，他侧重于两个问题领域中的每一个领域的两项政策：病人权利法案和医疗保险改革（卫生政策），以及破产改革和互联网暂停征税（金融服务政策）。她通过对立法工作人员和立法者的亲自采访来回答立法者如何看待他们的选民的问题。因变量的立法者的看法，谁在他们的地区感兴趣的是在一个给定的问题是衡量两个工具，包括在与立法工作人员和立法者的采访。访谈和由经济、政治和人口统计变量组成的数据集的组合允许描述性和定性分析以及更传统的统计分析。

Over twenty years ago, Fenno (1978) called attention to what he called the "key problem facing students of the representative-constituency relationship.. .the problem of perception." More specifically, Fenno noted the importance of viewing the constituency as the legislator does. In other words, "what does an elected representative see when he or she sees a constituency." (Fenno 1978). This Doctoral Dissertation Research project addresses this question and employs theories from cognitive and social psychology to develop a more complete theory of congressional representation. The project centers on the ways in which legislators' conceptions of their constituents are constrained by the availability heuristic (Tversky and Kahneman 1974). While political scientists have frequently invoked psychological theories in the study of public opinion, such theories have rarely been examined in the context of political elites. Part of the task of representation requires legislators to decide who in the district is interested in a given issue. The student argues that the availability heuristic offers important insight into legislators' perceptions of their districts. When making judgments about the interests of their district, legislators do not use all the relevant information, but rather rely on a subset of relevant information. Those interests (whether organized or unorganized) that are more easily accessible are more likely to be included in the legislator's perception of the district's interests on a given issue. In this dissertation the student examines selective perception and argues that the answer to this question requires the consideration of the availability heuristic. The central question investigated is what explains perceptual variations across legislators? The student offers that any answer to this question must take into account numerous hypotheses from the political science literature in combination with theories from cognitive psychology. It is this latter question that constitutes the majority of the empirical focus of this project.The student approaches the question of who legislators perceive as being part of the interested constituency on a given issue by focusing on current members of the U.S. House of Representatives and their legislative staff. Since the research is issue-specific, he focuses on two policies within each of two issue areas: the Patients' Bill of Rights and Medicare reform (health policy), and bankruptcy reform and the Internet tax moratorium (financial services policy). She uses in-person interviews with legislative staff and legislators to answer the question of how legislators see their constituents. The dependent variable of legislators' perceptions of who in their district is interested in a given issue is measured by two instruments included in the interviews with legislative staff and legislators. The combination of interviews and a dataset comprised of economic, political, and demographic variables allows both descriptive and qualitative analysis as well as a more conventional statistical analysis.