Doctoral Dissertation Research: Partisanship, Gender, and Policy Frames

博士论文研究：党派之争、性别和政策框架

• 批准号: 1747459
• 负责人: Michael Crespin
• 金额: $ 1.71万
• 依托单位: University of Oklahoma Norman Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-07-15 至 2020-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1747459&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Partisanship; Gender

Despite gains made over the past three decades, women remain the most underrepresented group in Congress relative to the general population. The purpose of this project is to better understand how women in Congress represent women generally. To this end, the project examines the relative influence of partisanship and gender on the content of congressional communications about women's issues and voters' responses to those messages. To accomplish this task, the project analyzes the content of more than 40,000 congressional newsletters about women's issues and uses the findings to generate a survey experiment to test how men and women in the electorate interpret messages about women's issues differently based on the gender of the messenger. This project contributes to an important, ongoing debate about representation --do women substantively represent women, are all members purely partisan, or is it something in between? And, how are voter opinions about women's issues affected by the gender of the person who presents them? This research will push forward our understanding of the character of women's representation in Congress, and will broaden the knowledge held by both voters and members of Congress concerning the quality of descriptive and substantive representation of women on women's issues.The purpose of this project is to evaluate the relative influence of partisanship and gender on the content of congressional communications about women's issues and voters' responses to those messages. To accomplish this task, the project uses structural topic modelling to identify how gender and partisanship influence communication about women's issues in congressional newsletters. It utilizes these findings in a survey experiment that randomizes the gender of the representative delivering the content to test how men and women in the electorate interpret messages about women's issues differently based on the gender of the messenger. This project presents several distinct contributions to the field of American politics generally, and scholarship on representation and political communication in particular. Methodologically, it utilizes an innovative methodological tool --structural topic modelling--to analyze a large corpus. It compares the content of these texts between categories available in the metadata, including gender and partisanship. The project then employs these findings in a survey experiment to assess the effect of the differing content on the electorate. This project will be the first scholarship, as of this date, to use this method to identify distinct patterns of communication between male and female members of legislatures and to assess the impact of these differences on the electorate. This contribution, and future research that utilizes a similar methodological approach, will allow us to better understand the character of women's representation and will facilitate a broader understanding of the content and impact of political messages generally.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

尽管在过去三十年中取得了进展，但与一般人口相比，妇女仍然是国会中代表人数最少的群体。该项目的目的是更好地了解议会中的妇女如何代表妇女。为此，该项目审查了党派和性别对国会关于妇女问题的通信内容以及选民对这些信息的反应的相对影响。为了完成这项任务，该项目分析了40 000多份关于妇女问题的国会通讯的内容，并利用分析结果进行了一项调查实验，以测试选民中的男子和妇女如何根据信使的性别对有关妇女问题的信息作出不同的解释。这个项目有助于一个重要的、正在进行的关于代表性的辩论-妇女是否实质上代表妇女，所有成员是否纯粹是党派性的，还是介于两者之间？选民对妇女问题的看法如何受到提出这些问题的人的性别的影响？这项研究将推动我们对妇女在国会代表权的性质的理解，该项目的目的是评估党派和性别对国会有关妇女问题的沟通内容和选民反应的相对影响这些信息。为了完成这项任务，该项目利用结构性主题模型来确定性别和党派偏见如何影响国会通讯中有关妇女问题的传播。它利用这些调查结果进行了一项调查实验，随机选择了提供内容的代表的性别，以测试选民中的男子和妇女如何根据信使的性别对有关妇女问题的信息作出不同的解释。该项目提出了几个不同的贡献，美国政治领域的一般，特别是代表性和政治沟通的奖学金。在方法上，它利用一种创新的方法工具-结构主题模型-来分析一个大型语料库。它将这些文本的内容按元数据中的类别进行比较，包括性别和党派。然后，该项目在一项调查实验中使用这些发现，以评估不同内容对选民的影响。该项目将是迄今为止第一个利用这一方法确定立法机构男女成员之间不同的交流模式并评估这些差异对选民的影响的奖学金。这一贡献，以及未来的研究，利用类似的方法，将使我们能够更好地了解妇女的代表性的特点，并将有助于更广泛地了解的内容和影响的政治信息一般，这一奖项反映了国家科学基金会的法定使命，并已被认为是值得的支持，通过评估使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。