National Study of Ethnic Pluralism and Politics

由移民和不同的出生率推动的人口结构变化正在导致人口的民族和种族构成发生重大变化，并最终导致美国选民的变化。政治参与、组织依恋和社会资本、身份、意识形态信仰和选举行为的模型，主要是在非西班牙裔白人和少数非裔美国人组成的样本上发展起来的。在21世纪的未来几十年里，亚裔美国人、加勒比裔美国人、拉丁裔美国人和非洲裔美国人在人口中所占的比例将越来越大，直到本世纪中叶，预计非西班牙裔白人将在全国人口中占少数。我们认为这是一个有利的时机，可以对美国人的政治态度、信仰、愿望和行为进行比较、基线调查和适度的小组跟踪；并开始发展概念和经验模型，适用于这些不断增长的种族和民族人口。这些群体在民族和种族认同的性质、政治意识以及对美国意识形态和政治制度的依恋方面差别很大。调查人员和顾问小组成员为这项研究带来了对这些不同群体的实证政治研究的长期、有益和富有成效的历史。相关结构和经验措施的发展将不仅对拟议的数据收集作出重大贡献，而且对未来在这些复杂和异质的民族和种族群体内部和之间进行类似主题的地方，区域和国家研究也将作出重大贡献。根据最近完成的对美国大陆多个种族和族裔群体的大面积概率研究，拟议的对5,000个亚洲人、加勒比人、非洲人、非西班牙裔白人和拉丁裔美国人群体的电话调查将是我们所知的第一个具有全国代表性的、明确比较的、同时对所有这些群体进行的研究。使用相同的结构，通过经验验证的措施在这些样本中令人满意地工作，将为种族和民族如何影响广泛群体的政治态度、行为和行动主义水平的第一次比较和实证分析提供机会。这些数据将使学者们能够探索群体内部和群体之间的差异，从而增加我们对身份、意识、意识形态信仰、社会人口统计学以及社会和经济地位因素如何影响或构建不同民族和种族背景、移民和公民身份以及地理分散的人们的政治生活的知识；促进对群体、自我和社会发展中与成年期政治行为相关的重要方面的理解。这些数据集在美国不同民族和种族人口的国家样本上的存在，将为假设的发展和经验关系的检验提供前所未有的机会。由于2004年收集的数据将于2005年发布（ICPSR和Web），并于2009年发布面板数据集，因此这些数据将很快用于更大的社会科学领域，特别是政治学。这将为经验丰富的和新的调查人员提供前所未有的机会，以检验关于基于群体和个人的资源对种族和族裔群体政治生活的相对影响的各种假设，但由于缺乏适当的、可比较的、高质量的数据，这些假设很少得到检验。正如我们从最早的NBES和80年代和90年代的黑人和西班牙裔政治研究中了解到的那样，这些数据也将在高中，本科和研究生课堂以及其他教育目的（研讨会，教科书等）中受益。此外，NBES的发展所伴随的研究和培训活动以及相关研究对一大批目前在该领域担任重要职位的学术政治学家的发展和培训产生了积极的影响。这项研究有可能超越这些早期研究的成就，因为：1)它的范围更大；2)它以过去二十年的工作为基础；3)在全国范围内有更多的感兴趣的政治学家，他们精通复杂的调查研究方法和定量数据分析。一旦完成，这项新研究将对理解种族和少数民族政策关注的本质、政策和候选人偏好、政党依恋以及增加政治参与的方法具有重要意义，包括在美国民主进程中各种各样的活动，如投票。

Demographic changes fueled by immigration and differential birth rates are producing major changes in the ethnic and racial composition of the population and eventually in the American electorate. Models of political participation, organizational attachment and social capital, identity, ideological beliefs, and electoral behavior have been developed on samples constituted largely by non-Hispanic whites, and to a lesser degree, African Americans. Over the next several decades of the 21st century, individuals from Asian American, Caribbean American, Latino American, and African American groups will constitute an increasingly substantial share of the population, until mid-century when non-Hispanic whites are projected to comprise a numerical minority of the national population. We believe this is a propitious time to launch a comparative, baseline survey and modest panel follow-up of Americans' political attitudes, beliefs, aspirations, and behaviors; and to begin developing conceptual and empirical models that are appropriate within and across these growing race and ethnic populations. These groups differ greatly in the nature of ethnic and racial identity, political consciousness, and their attachments to American ideological and political institutions. The investigators and advisory panel members bring to the study a long, complimentary, and productive history of empirical political research on these diverse groups. The development of relevant constructs and empirical measures will make a major contribution, not only to the proposed data collections, but also to future local, regional, and national studies on similar topics within and between these complex and heterogeneous ethnic and racial groups. Based upon recently completed, large area probability studies of multiple race and ethnic groups in the continental United States, the proposed telephone surveys of 5,000 Asian, Caribbean, African, non-Hispanic white and Latino American groups will be the first, to our knowledge, nationally representative, explicitly comparative, simultaneous study of all these groups. Using the same constructs, with measures empirically validated to work satisfactorily across these samples, will provide opportunities for the first comparative, empirical analysis of how race and ethnicity influence the political attitudes, behaviors and activism levels across a broad array of groups. The data will permit scholars to explore within and between group differences, thereby increasing our knowledge about how identity, consciousness, ideological beliefs, socio-demographic, and social and economic status factors, influence or structure the political lives of people that differ in ethnic and racial background, immigration and citizenship status, and geographic dispersion; advancing the understanding of the ways in which important aspects of group, self, and social development related to political behavior in adulthood.The existence of these datasets on national samples of diverse American ethnic and racial populations will provide unprecedented opportunities for hypothesis development and testing of empirical relationships. Because the 2004 data collection will be disseminated (ICPSR and the Web) in 2005 and the panel datasets released in 2009, the data will be available very quickly to the larger social science fields, especially political science. This will provide unprecedented opportunities for seasoned and new investigators to test a variety of hypotheses about the relative influence that group and individually based resources have on the political lives of racial and ethnic groups, but rarely tested because of the absence of appropriate, comparative, high quality data. As we have learned from the earliest NBES and Black and Hispanic Politics studies of the 80s and 90s, these data will also be of benefit in the high school, undergraduate and graduate classrooms, and for other educational purposes (workshops, text books, etc.). In addition, the research and training activities accompanying the development of the NBES and related studies had positive influences in the development and training of a large number of academic political scientists now holding prestigious and important positions in the field.This proposed study has the potential of surpassing the accomplishments of these earlier studies because: 1) of its larger scope; 2) it builds on the work of the last two decades; and, 3) the presence of a wider array of interested political scientists across the country that are well-versed in sophisticated survey research methods and quantitative data analyses. When completed, this new study will have important implications for understanding the nature of racial and ethnic minority policy concerns, policy and candidate preferences, party attachments, and methods of increasing political participation, including a wide variety of activities, such as voting, in the American democratic process.