Chapter Ten: Public Opinion Exercises My Mind's Made Up? Using information from the National Election Studies, present an argument for whether or not aggregate public opinion has been stable in five of the following policy areas. Then present a reasoned argument for why changes might or might not have occurred. Power of the federal government Government services and spending Favoring desegregation or segregation Aid to African Americans/minorities Government seeing to fair treatment in jobs Equal role for women School prayer United States should not concern itself with world problems Military spending Have economic policies of federal government made things better or worse? Who Uses Ideology? The authors argue that ideology does not guide the political thinking of most citizens. To test this notion, use the advanced search tool of Google's massive archive of discussion forum posts to search for at least eight of the following terms. (Note: you should probably limit your searches to political forums, or forums containing the word politics.) How many messages does each search return? When you look over the posts, do people seem to be using the terms in the same ways? Ideology (or ideological) Conservative Liberal Republican Democrat (or Democratic) Left-wing Right-wing Fascist Anarchist Congress "Ethical" Polling The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) has published a Code of Pr o fessional Ethics and Practices (pdf file), as well a listing of the best practices for polling (pdf file). Read over these documents, as well as the survey practices that AAPOR condemns. Then see if you can find any news organizations or polls online that appear to violate AAPOR guidelines. What's Your Opinion? Do a Google search for online “instant polls.” Do such polls appear to be common online? Take a couple of the polls. Based on the readings from Chapter 10, present an argument for whether the polls in which you participated should be regarded as "scientific."