Beliefs about Genes and Environment as Determinants of Behavioral Characteristics     

Singer  Eleanor; Antonucci  Toni C.; Burmeister  Margit; Couper  Mick P.; Raghunathan  Trivellore E.; Van Hoewyk  John 《Int. Journal of Public Opinion Research》2007,19(3):331-353

This study investigates beliefs about the determinants of suchbehavioral characteristics as intelligence, athleticism, obesity,and alcoholism by asking respondents to the 2004 General SocialSurvey to rate vignettes describing individuals exhibiting thesecharacteristics along a 21-point scale ranging from completegenetic determination to complete environmental determination.The vignettes systematically varied the social desirabilityof the characteristic as well as the race and gender of theperson exhibiting it. We analyzed the effect of the carefullycounterbalanced vignette characteristics and the correspondingrater characteristics on respondents’ ratings of the vignettes,hypothesizing that these ratings would reflect mechanisms ofclaiming credit for desirable characteristics and avoiding blamefor undesirable ones. Contrary to our expectations, we foundno effect of any of the vignette characteristics on the ratings,and only two significant main effects of respondent demographiccharacteristics: Black respondents were more likely to use geneticratings; and better educated respondents, environmental ones. Received for publication October 26, 2006. Accepted for publication April 23, 2007.  相似文献   

PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD DATA SHARING BY FEDERAL AGENCIES     

Singer  Eleanor; Schaeffer  Nora Cate; Raghunathan  Trivellore 《Int. Journal of Public Opinion Research》1997,9(3):277-285

Because of the high cost of the 1990 census and the continuedundercoverage of some population subgroups, it has been suggestedthat administrative records be used to supplement or replaceconventional census-taking activities. Very little informationexists concerning public knowledge and attitudes on this topic.The most extensive information to date comes from questionsasked on several IRS surveys of taxpayers. In late 1993 an opportunitypresented itself to add a small number of questions about datasharing to national telephone surveys conducted by the WisconsinLetters and Sciences Survey Center. Here we report on an analysisof these data.  相似文献