At the intersection of behavioral and institutional studies of policy-making lie a series of questions about how elite choices affect mass public opinion. Scholars have considered how judicial decisions—especially US Supreme Court decisions—affect individuals’ support for specific policy positions. These studies yield a series of competing findings. Whereas past research uses opinion surveys to...

Title of dissertation: PUBLIC OPINION, POLITICAL REPRESENTATION, AND DEMOCRATIC CHOICE Michael J. Zenz, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Dissertation directed by: Assistant Professor Eric Pacuit Professor Christopher W. Morris Department of Philosophy In this dissertation I argue that political representatives have duties to be responsive to public opinion in their policy decisions. The existence of ...

BACKGROUND Health policy-making, a complex, multi-factorial process, requires balancing conflicting values. A salient issue is public support for policies; however, one reason for limited impact of public opinion may be misperceptions of policy makers regarding public opinion. For example, empirical research is scarce on perceptions of policy makers regarding public opinion on smoke-free public...

The telephone survey is a common social science research method for capturing public opinion, for example, an individual's values or attitudes, or the government's approval rating. However, reducing domestic landline usage, increasing nonresponse rate, and suffering from response bias of the interviewee's self-reported data pose methodological challenges to such an approach. Because of the labo...