Policy Agendas in the United States Since 1945

9320922琼斯这项研究的重点是创建一个大型的、全面的数据库。建成后，它将允许用户追踪公众关注、媒体报道、国会关注、立法行动和联邦政府的预算支出，了解美国政府自二战以来面临的每一个主要社会问题。有了这个数据集，研究人员将回答美国政治的一个核心问题：为什么我们的政治领导人关注某些问题，而忽视其他问题？这个话题通常被称为政治学研究界的议程设置，事实证明，以系统的方式研究这个话题出人意料地困难。通过收集关于民意调查、媒体报道、国会听证会、法规和联邦预算支出的信息，研究人员将关注这个问题。从本质上讲，这是一个关于设定政府优先事项的项目。调查人员想知道，民意调查和媒体报道中反映的公众关切是否转化为政府的关注、立法或联邦预算的变化。有充分的理由怀疑，这一过程不是公众关注的政府行动的简单单向流动模式。相反，政府行为本身可能有助于确定公众认为重要的问题清单。随着这个大型数据集的创建，调查人员将解决这些问题。通过开发主题编码系统，并在整个项目中统一应用它，他们可以显示出注意力啊何时转移到了许多新问题中的任何一个上。例如，它们可以追踪环境控制、种族关系、住房、犯罪或任何一系列话题的关注度上升或下降的时间。有了这些信息，他们将能够看到国会听证会、法规和预算拨款在多大程度上源于、导致或独立于媒体的关注和公共关注。***

9320922 Jones This research focuses on the creation of a large, comprehensive database. When complete, it will allow users to trace public attention, media coverage, congressional attention, legislative action, and budgetary outlays in the federal government to every major social problem that the U.S. government has faced since World War Two. With this dataset, the researchers will answer a central question of American politics: why do out political leaders attend to certain problems while they ignore others? This topic, generally called agenda-setting within the political science research community, has proved surprisingly difficult to study in a systematic manner. By gathering information on public opinion polls, media coverage, congressional hearings, statutes and federal budgetary outlays, the researchers will attend to this question. Essentially, this is a project on the setting of governmental priorities. The investigators want to know whether public concerns, as reflected in polls and in media coverage, are translated into governmental attention, law-making, or changes in the federal budget. There are strong reasons to suspect that the process is not the simple unidirectional model of flow of public concern to government action. Rather, governmental actions themselves may help determine the list of problems that the public deems important. With the creation of this large dataset, the investigators will sort out these questions. By developing a topic-coding system and by applying it uniformly throughout the project, they can show when attention ah shifted to any of a number of new problems. For example, they can trace when attention has risen or fallen on the topic of environmental controls, race relations, housing, crime, or any of a number of topics. With this information, they will be able to see to what extent congressional hearings, statutes, and budgetary allocations stem from, lead to, or are independent from media attention and pub lic concern. ***