Experimental vignettes for framing and cueing research /
Americans are often exposed to persuasive political messages. In this chapter, I describe a research project which examines how frames, or persuasive messages that highlight specific aspects of an issue, can influence public attitudes toward the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). My co-author and I beg...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
London :
SAGE Publications Inc.,
2023.
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| Series: | SAGE Research methods cases.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | Americans are often exposed to persuasive political messages. In this chapter, I describe a research project which examines how frames, or persuasive messages that highlight specific aspects of an issue, can influence public attitudes toward the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). My co-author and I began our research process with the observation that the IRS is an understudied topic in public opinion research, despite being of vital importance to the functioning of the US government. In surveys, Americans are often asked about their opinions of political institutions, but rarely do peer-reviewed political science articles examine whether these perceptions are malleable. To evaluate whether public perceptions of the IRS can be improved via political messaging, my coauthor and I proposed a novel survey instrument. Using an embedded survey experiment, we randomly assigned participants to conditions that varied according to the presence or absence of various kinds of persuasive frames. In some conditions, respondents learned information about the functions of the IRS. In other conditions, respondents were exposed to persuasive frames that resonated with the core values of political partisans. We used a series of t-test contrasts to determine whether these "value frames" increased support for the IRS among partisans relative to an information-only condition. Using the results of our experiment as a pertinent example, in this case I introduce a series of best practices related to the design and comparison of experimental vignettes for the purposes of framing and cueing research. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource : illustrations. |
| ISBN: | 9781529627930 1529627931 |