Analysis of Public Opinion and Political Attitudes

Catalog description

This course engages students in the empirical study of public opinion. PL SC 447 Analysis of Public Opinion and Political Attitudes (3) The essence of democracy is popular sovereignty. The voice of the people must be freely expressed and send a clear message to elected officials. In turn, those officials must be responsive to citizens. This class focuses on the voice of the people with particular attention to several analytic questions: How do we measure public opinion? Do public opinion polls and other methods provide an accurate measure of public sentiment? How can we know if public opinion has changed? How can we utilize public opinion data to assess political polarization, civic competence, and levels of the public's trust in government? In this course, students will learn how to answer questions like these using the same data reported by the press, utilized by government officials, and examined by political scientists to assess the success of democracy in the United States and throughout the world.The course is organized around a series of contemporary policy topics (such as foreign policy, welfare or education) integrated with specific analytic techniques. By the end of the semester, students will be familiar with public opinion on many contemporary policy debates and they will learn a series of data analytic skills that can be applied to any topic. Students are required to have an understanding of introductory statistics (equivalent to the knowledge they would gain from PL SC 309 or STAT 200 ) prior to taking this course.