A Process of Tracing Study of Information Search and "Rational" Decision Making in Elections

9321236刘投票决定是在瞬息万变的资讯环境下作出的，但政治学家研究选举、调查的主要方法却是静态的。这项调查探索了选民在政治竞选期间使用的信息获取和选择策略，使用了一种新的研究技术，即动态过程跟踪方法，允许在投票决策做出时对其进行研究。这种方法的实质是以一种允许研究人员记录和研究收集信息的方式提供关于(虚构的)候选人的信息。这是通过使用现代多媒体计算机技术来实现的。有关候选人的信息(例如，政策立场、背景/个人特征)存储在计算机中；然而，只有这些信息的简短“标签”(史密斯关于问题“A”的立场)是可见的，必须通过物理“访问”(通过点击鼠标)来获取信息。标签在计算机屏幕上向下滚动，这样在任何给定的时间都只能获得有限数量的信息。这种滚动模拟了政治竞选活动的动态、持续性质。这项研究对于投票决策的模型和民主的基本理论都具有重要的意义。开发了一种新的方法，这将首次允许直接评估选民如何利用或多或少的个人资源(即专业知识)在或多或少要求苛刻的情况下收集参与政治竞选的候选人的信息。通过这种方法，科学家可以探索专业知识和广泛的竞选战略如何影响信息收集和合并到决策的方式，以及这些因素如何影响投票选择的规范性“正确性”。这些都是政治学家面临的新问题，这种方法论有望为研究开辟许多新的丰富多彩的研究课题。***

9321236 Lau The vote decision is made in the context of a dynamic ever- changing information environment, and yet the chief methodology with which political scientists study elections, surveys, is a static one. This investigation explores the information acquisition and choice strategies employed by voters during political campaigns with a new research technique, a dynamic process tracing methodology, that allows the vote decision to be studied while it is being made. The essence of this methodology is to provide information about (fictitious) candidates in a manner that allows the researchers to record and study the way in which that information is gathered. This is accomplished by the use of modern, multi-media computer technology. Information about candidates (e.g., policy positions; background/personal characteristics) is stored in the computer; however, only brief "labels" for this information (Smith' stand on issue "A") are visible and the information must be physically "accessed" (by clicking a mouse) for it to be learned. The labels "scroll" down the computer screen so that only a limited amount of information is available at any given time. This scrolling emulates the dynamic, ongoing nature of political campaigns. The implications of this research for models of the vote decision and for basic theories of democracy are significant. A new methodology is developed that, for the first time, will allow a direct assessment of how voters, with more or less personal resources (i.e., expertise), gather information about candidates involved in political campaigns in more or less demanding situations. With this methodology scientists can explore how expertise and broad campaign strategies affect the ways information is gathered and combined into a decision, and how those factors affect the normative "correctness" of the vote choice. These are new questions for political scientists, and this methodology promises to open many new fertile research qu estions for study. ***