Collaborative Research: American National Election Studies (ANES) 2006-2009

为什么美国人会像选举日那样投票呢？美国国家选举研究（ANES）的使命是通过提供支持丰富假设检验的数据，最大限度地提高方法的卓越性，测量许多变量，并促进跨人员，背景和时间的比较，为选举结果的解释提供信息。ANES通过为研究人员提供通过普通公民的眼睛观察政治世界的视角来履行这一使命。这些数据至关重要，因为这些公民的行为决定了选举结果。这项研究将在未来四年继续进行ANES的任务，但采用了比以往任何时候都更好的新方法。它建立在ANES历史的基础上，使该项目成为几代社会科学家的宝贵资源。就像过去的总统选举一样，在ANES时间序列中，总统年选举前后的研究将通过对具有全国代表性的成年人样本进行面对面访谈来进行，回复率异常高。这项研究将包括2008年大选的具体问题，以及增加ANES时间序列的问题，该序列现已进入第六个十年。此外，学者们将首次能够购买采访记录和时间序列研究的额外案例，以增强其广度。在许多其他方面，这一建议构成了对过去的重大突破，概述了新的数据收集类型，选择问卷项目的新方法，新的管理结构，新的组织程序，以促进更广泛的学者的参与，并在ANES与其用户社区之间建立了一种根本不同的关系。一项新的数据收集工作将是一项为期两年的小组研究，包括对相同的受访者进行六次核心数据收集，外加15次额外的数据收集。第一波核心浪潮将在2007年底，初选之前；接下来的三个核心浪潮将在选举日之前的几个月里展开；最后的核心浪潮将在选举后的11月和5月。在小组的整个生命周期中，数据也将每隔一个月收集一次，但重点是不明确的政治问题，以尽量减少选择性小组人员流失或由政治兴趣驱动的条件反射，同时产生大量有价值的受访者信息。该小组将使学者们能够以新的方式研究公民政治，并阐明选举年政治如何影响新政府在任期形成阶段的判断。第二个新的数据收集企业涉及与俄亥俄州立大学人力资源研究中心的伙伴关系。他们进行了全国青年纵向调查（National Longitudinal Survey of Youth），几十年来，该调查一直在用长得惊人、种类繁多的问卷采访一个由全国成年人和他们的孩子组成的具有代表性的小组。这些调查将首次纳入衡量政治态度和行为的问题，从而可以研究整个生命周期和跨代的发展和社会化经验。为了帮助学者开发和验证在上述调查中使用的新测量工具，2006年11月将进行一项ANES试点研究，重新访问2004年ANES的受访者。这个数据收集计划的组成部分相互加强。单独地，每个组成部分将允许广泛的学者评估新旧理论主张的稳健性。此外，每项工作的目的都是促进与所有其他数据收集的协调分析。所有这些研究的具体设计将由一群比以往任何时候都更加智力多样化的学者来决定。它的新pi和监督委员会来自更多的大学和更广泛的学科，而不是它的任何前任。这项研究项目包括一个新的基于互联网的程序，用于征求、处理、审查和提供对任何希望提供研究设计元素的建议的反馈。所有这些都将以前所未有的透明度对用户社区进行。由于这些活动将产生大量的数据，因此已经设计了详细的计划，概述了如何由已有的经验丰富的技术人员进行研究设计、数据收集和数据传播过程的管理。除了协调问卷设计和实地工作流程外，工作人员还将通过添加新收集的数据来维护和更新该研究庞大而多方面的网站，并大大增强该研究从20世纪40年代开始收集的先前信息的电子档案。更广泛的影响：通过生成高质量的大型，多方面的数据集，ANES将使研究人员能够学习有关政治世界的新的重要课程。这些数据将广泛而迅速地分发给成千上万的学者，并在世界各地的课堂上使用，以丰富研究和教育。美国人想了解它的民主是如何运作的。ANES将帮助国家了解自身，探索投票行为和选举结果的原因和后果。有了这些知识，政府就能更好地培育和完善其政府体系。

Why did America vote as it did on Election Day? The mission of the American National ElectionStudies (ANES) is to inform explanations of election outcomes by providing data that support richhypothesis testing, maximize methodological excellence, measure many variables, and promotecomparisons across people, contexts, and time. The ANES serves this mission by providing researchers with a view of the political world through the eyes of ordinary citizens. Such data are critical, because these citizens' actions determine election outcomes. This research continues the ANES mission for the next four years, but in new and better waysthan ever before. It builds on an ANES history that has made the project a valuable resource togenerations of social scientists. As has been true for every past presidential election in the ANES timeseries, a presidential year pre- and post-election study will be conducted using face-to-face interviewing of a nationally representative sample of adults, with an unusually high response rate. This study will include questions specific to the election of 2008 and also questions that augment the ANES time series, which is now in its sixth decade. For the first time, moreover, scholars will be able to purchase interview minutes and additional cases on the time series study to enhance its breadth.In many other respects, this proposal constitutes a substantial break from the past, outlining new kinds of data collection, new methods for choosing questionnaire items, a new management structure, new organizational procedures to promote the involvement of a broader set of scholars, and a fundamentally different kind of relationship between the ANES and its user community.One new data collection effort will be a two-year panel study involving six core waves of datacollection with the same respondents, plus 15 additional waves of data collection. The first core wave will be in late 2007, before the primaries; the next three core waves will be spread over the months running up to election day; and the final core waves will be in November and May after the election. Data will also be collected during every other month throughout the life of the panel, but with a focus on matters that are not explicitly political, to minimize selective panel attrition or conditioning driven by interest in politics while producing lots of valuable information on respondents. The panel will allow scholars to study citizen politics in new ways and will illuminate how election year politics affect judgments of the new administration in the formative months of its term.A second new data collection enterprise involves a partnership with the Ohio State University Centerfor Human Resource Research. They conduct the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which has been interviewing a nationally representative panel of adults and their children for decades with breathtakingly long and varied questionnaires. Questions measuring political attitudes and behaviors will be included in these surveys for the first time, allowing the study of developmental and socialization experiences through the life-cycle and across generations.To help scholars develop and validate new measurement tools for use in the above-listed surveys, anANES pilot study will be run in November, 2006, reinterviewing respondents from the 2004 ANES.The components of this data collection plan each strengthen the others. Alone, each component willallow a broad range of scholars to evaluate the robustness of old and new theoretical claims. In addition, each endeavor will be designed to facilitate coordinated analysis with all the other data collections. The specifics of the designs of all these studies will be determined by an array of scholars more intellectually diverse than ever before. Its new PIs and Board of Overseers hail from more universities and a broader range of disciplines than any of its predecessors. This research project includes a new Internet-based procedure for soliciting, processing, reviewing, and providing feedback on proposals for study design elements from anyone who wishes to offer them. All this will be done with an unprecedented transparency to the user community. Because these activities will generate a huge amount of data, detailed plans have been designed outlining how the management of the study design, data collection, and data dissemination processes will be carried out by the experienced technical staff that is already in place. In addition to coordinating the questionnaire design and fieldwork processes, the staff will maintain and update the study's huge and multifaceted website by adding the newly collected data and also dramatically enhancing the study's electronic archives of previously-collected information dating back from the 1940s.Broader Impacts: By generating large, multifaceted datasets of high quality, the ANES will equip researchers to learn new and important lessons about the world of politics. These data will be distributed widely and quickly to serve thousands of scholars and to be used in classrooms around the world to enrich research and education. Americans want to understand how its democracy works. The ANES will help to inform the nation about itself, exploring the causes and consequences of voting behavior and electoral outcomes. With such knowledge, the polity will be better equipped to nurture and refine its system of government.