Collaborative Research: The Measurement and Identification of Media Priming Effects in Political Science.

合作研究：政治学中媒体启动效应的测量和识别。

• 批准号: 0849715
• 负责人: Kosuke Imai
• 金额: $ 6.52万
• 依托单位: Princeton University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-07-01 至 2011-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0849715&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Measurement; Identification; Media

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Media priming has been established as one of the most important ways in which the information environment of electoral campaigns affects public opinion. By changing the criteria citizens use to evaluate policies and politicians, the media conditionally affect mass preferences. Over the past two decades, dozens of studies have demonstrated media priming effects via a wide variety of media content. Recently, however, concerns have been raised about the measurement and identification strategies used to demonstrate media priming effects. A critical decision for researchers involves the timing of the measurement of the primed dimension relative to exposure to media messages. Two alternative strategies are used in the literature: pre-test versus post-test designs. Under the pre-test design the primed attitude is measured before the administration of stimuli, while under the post-test design the measurement is taken after the treatment is given. The importance of this design choice is highlighted in a recent debate about the effects of implicit racial cues, where some find no significant priming effects under the pre-test design, contradicting the empirical evidence previously obtained under the post-test design. The goal of the proposed research is to shed light on this general measurement issue as well as related substantive findings of media priming studies. The PIs demonstrate mathematically that neither pre-test nor post-test design alone is sufficient to identify media priming effects. Existing studies that employ the post-test design risk overestimating media priming effects, while recent studies employing the pre-test design may find no effects even when priming has occurred. To overcome this identification problem, this project combines the two designs in a creative way. This strategy produces more powerful inferences about the media priming effect and offers a new set of research methods that can be used to make stronger inferences about media priming. Experimental tests investigate the consequences of different measurement strategies and their implications for the substantive literature. The broader impacts of this project are twofold. First, the findings will refine the field?s knowledge about the nature and extent of media priming effects in modern campaigns. In particular, results will bear on how, when, and why campaigns affect candidate evaluations and policy opinion. Second, the proposed methods will have a wide array of applications in other areas of political science and psychology where researchers face a similar dilemma about alternative measurement strategies and experimental designs.

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏与再投资法》（公法111-5）资助的。媒体启动已被确定为选举运动信息环境影响公众舆论的最重要方式之一。通过更改公民评估政策和政客的标准，媒体有条件地影响群众偏好。在过去的二十年中，数十个研究表明了通过各种媒体含量的媒体启动效应。然而，最近，人们对用于证明媒体启动效应的测量和识别策略引起了人们的关注。研究人员的一个关键决定涉及启动维度相对于接触媒体信息的测量时间。文献中使用了两种替代策略：预测试与测试后设计。在测试前设计下，启动态度是在刺激施用之前测量的，而在测试后设计下，进行治疗后进行测量。在最近关于隐性种族提示的影响的辩论中，强调了这种设计选择的重要性，其中有些人在测试前设计下没有发现显着的启动效应，这与先前在测试后设计中获得的经验证据相矛盾。拟议的研究的目的是阐明这一一般测量问题以及媒体启动研究的相关实质发现。 PIS在数学上证明，仅一次预测试和测试后设计都足以识别媒体启动效应。采用测试后设计的现有研究风险高估了媒体启动效应，而最近采用测试前设计的研究也可能发现即使发生启动也没有效果。为了克服这个识别问题，该项目以创造性的方式结合了这两个设计。该策略对媒体启动效应产生了更强大的推论，并提供了一套新的研究方法，可用于对媒体启动进行更强大的推论。实验测试研究了不同测量策略的后果及其对实体文献的影响。该项目的更广泛影响是双重的。首先，这些发现将完善对现代运动中媒体启动效应的性质和程度的知识。特别是，结果将遵循如何，何时以及为什么竞选影响候选人评估和政策意见。其次，所提出的方法将在政治学和心理学的其他领域中有各种各样的应用，研究人员在替代测量策略和实验设计方面面临着类似的困境。