RAPID - Russia, Ukraine and The Dynamics of Public Attitudes Towards U.S. and Global Security

这个项目考察了一个紧迫的、时间敏感的、具有强大潜在威胁美国国家安全的话题。美国公众对不断加深的乌克兰危机和俄罗斯可能采取的其他激进举措的反应，将对美国和全球安全产生重大影响。该项目将调查美国公众对乌克兰危机以及俄罗斯在东欧、中东和其他地区可能采取的其他行动的态度。认识到公众对外交政策的态度越来越重要，研究人员已经开始描述影响公民关于军事干预、经济制裁和人道主义救援努力的决策的因素。然而，到目前为止，在测试重要理论思想方面的进展受到严重的数据限制。大多数考察影响稳定和舆论变化的力量的研究都依赖于综合数据，从而限制了在个人层面上解释正在发生的事情的能力。分析个人层面态度的有限研究通常依赖于为其他目的创建的数据，因此无法获得重要的解释变量。相比之下，本研究使用了对美国成年人口进行的多波代表性国家小组调查中收集的数据，分析了各种理论上有动机的假设，这些假设涉及影响公众对乌克兰危机、后续事件以及更广泛的美国外交政策的态度的因素。测试的假设将侧重于理解基本的价值取向和个性特征、利益-成本计算、领导人形象和党派依恋提供的线索、道德考量如何结合在一起，推动对乌克兰危机和后续事件的反应，以及更广泛的外交政策态度。在认知心理学和实验经济学最新工作的基础上，新可用的统计技术将被用来调查这些因素影响的异质性来源。该项目将在未来12个月内对美国公众进行四次具有代表性的大型(N=5000)全国小组调查。基于英国经济和社会研究理事会(ESRC)最近资助的关于美国、英国和法国对叙利亚危机的反应以及这三个国家公众更普遍的外交政策态度的调查研究，拟议中的研究将产生非常高质量、成本效益高的科学成果。由此产生的多波调查数据集将提供所需的信息，以便在美俄关系随之发展的时期，对美国公众外交政策态度的起因和动态进行复杂、尖端的多变量分析。为了充分利用该项目的影响，所有调查数据将在实地考察工作完成后三个月内通过一个广为宣传的项目网站提供给学术界。主要发现将以论文的形式发表在主要的同行评议期刊上，并以一本书长的手稿形式发表。这项研究将有助于专家和基础了解在国家安全和世界安全面临的重大威胁日益增长的时期，对俄罗斯关系和美国外交政策立场可能做出的替代反应。为了扩大其在学术界之外的影响，将通过项目网站上的图表和简短摘要文件，以及广泛使用的印刷媒体和电子媒体上的“专栏”和“博客”，将主要研究成果传达给非专业受众。

This project examines a pressing, time sensitive, topic with strong potential to threaten U.S. national security. How the U.S. public reacts to the deepening Ukraine crisis and other possible aggressive moves by Russia will have significant consequences for U.S. and global security. The project will investigate the dynamics of U.S. public attitudes towards the Ukraine crisis and other possible Russian actions in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere. Recognizing the growing relevance of public attitudes for foreign policy, researchers have begun to delineate factors shaping citizen decision-making about military intervention, economic sanctions and humanitarian relief efforts. To date, however, progress in testing important theoretical ideas has been constrained by serious data limitations. Most studies examining forces affecting stability and change in public opinion have relied on aggregate data, thereby restricting the ability to explain what is happening at the individual level. Limited research analyzing individual-level attitudes typically has relied on data created for other purposes and important explanatory variables are unavailable. In contrast, the present study uses data gathered in multi-wave representative national panel surveys of the U.S. adult population to analyze a wide variety of theoretically motivated hypotheses about factors affecting public attitudes regarding the Ukraine crisis, ensuing events, and U.S. foreign policy more generally. Hypotheses tested will focus on understanding how basic value orientations and personality characteristics, benefit-cost calculations, cues provided by leader images and partisan attachments, and moral considerations combine to drive reactions to the Ukraine crisis and subsequent events as well as foreign-policy attitudes more generally. Building on recent work in cognitive psychology and experimental economics, newly available statistical techniques will be marshaled to investigate sources of heterogeneity in the effects of these factors. This project will conduct four large (N = 5000), representative national panel surveys of the American public over the next 12 months. Building on recent survey research funded by the U.K. Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) on American, British and French reactions to the Syrian crisis and more general foreign policy attitudes among the publics of these three countries, the proposed study will produce very high quality, cost effective, science. The resulting multi-wave survey data set will provide information needed for to conduct sophisticated, leading-edge multivariate analyses of the etiology and dynamics of the American public's foreign policy attitudes in a period when relations between the United States and Russia are evolving in consequential ways. To leverage the project's impact, all survey data will be made available to the scholarly community within three months after the completion of fieldwork via a widely publicized project website. Major findings will be presented in papers submitted for publication in leading peer-reviewed journals and in a book-length manuscript. This study will facilitate expert and lay understanding of possible alternative reactions towards relations with Russia and America's foreign policy stance more generally during a time when significant threats to national security and world security are growing. To magnify its impacts outside the scholarly community, key findings will be conveyed to non-specialist audiences via graphs and short summary documents on the project website, as well as by "columns" and "blogs" in widely accessed print and electronic media.