Kinds of Knowledge

There are many ways to measure what people know. Sometimes scholars and others use them interchangeably, missing the nuances. Below are a few:

Civics Knowledge -- usually measured by questions such as "what branch of government interprets the constitution." These are aimed at understanding a person's base level of how government is structured and works. Rarely used as a dependent variable except by people who study socializing of immigrants into the U.S. or in youth learning the basics of government, it most often shows up as an independent or control variable for other kinds of political knowledge. But you'll often see this kind of question as a generic "political knowledge" measure, especially in news stories bemoaning the fact that so few people can identity some core aspect of democracy. Not a good measure of general political knowledge and lousy in combination with media effects.

Campaign Knowledge -- usually a measure of an active political campaign, most often how various candidates stand on particular issues or, sometimes, questions like "what candidate recently said xyz." A very good measure if you're looking to explain specific campaign events or factors that lead to this kind of knowledge, such as what media best predict knowledge of some recent campaign event. Good measure with media variables.

Current Events Knowledge -- Seen perhaps most often as a measure of "political knowledge," here I'm separating it from "campaign knowledge" because, what the hell, I need more categories. Current events is a wide ranging category. It could something simple like "what party controls the U.S. Senate" or "what happened last week in Iraq?" This is a really good measure if you're studying media effects.

Political Actor Knowledge -- by actors I don't mean on the silver screen but rather measures that ask such questions as, "Who is Nancy Pelosi?" We typically prompt with a name and ask for the office, though sometimes we'll prompt with the office and ask for a name: "Who is the Speaker of the House?" Methodological note: a recent study explained the gender differences (men scoring higher than women on political knowledge tests) in part because women are rarely used in name-prompt questions. So in other words, men do better because we mostly ask about men who are political actors or public figures. So-so for media studies.

Misinformation -- better known as anti-knowledge, or knowledge of incorrect facts such as the belief that Barrack Obama is Muslim. This is the type of knowledge that most readily gets mixed up with attitudes (I'll discuss this later in the week in a post about public relations challenges). We don't study this one an awful lot but it's a great one for media scholars since certain kinds of media content (talk radio, for example) tends to be associated with incorrect knowledge.

There are no doubt others I'm missing. As they come to me, I'll add 'em. Suggestions welcome.

Presidential Debates and Learning

Do people learn from presidential debates?

Yes. A majority of studies show a connection between watching the debates and campaign issue knowledge. Now this gets tricky. Are politically interested folks drawn to watch debates and therefore do better on such tests? Obviously yeah, but often these studies statistically control for many of the factors associated with what people know (education, age, etc.). In a few, controlled experiments attempted to tease out the effects.

However, a few studies have failed to find a connection between learning and viewing debates. In some cases, to use doctoral PhDweebspeak, "it depends." It depends on the kind of campaign, the kind of candidates, the kind of questions one asks. It's a difficult area to study.

In general, if one carefully reads the literature, you'll find televised debates do improve issue knowledge, issue salience (how important certain issues are to you), and evaluations of the candidates (from likability to perceptions of competence and character).

Okay, but how about those irritating post-debate analyses?

One of my first studies as a graduate student was of the 1988 debates and I remember sitting in a room as students watched the infamous Lloyd Bensen/Dan Quayle vice presidential debate.

Students had a thingie where they signalled emotional response to whatever the candidates said. Fun, especially when the famous "you're no Jack Kennedy" line spilled out. Crazy data.

But what we were interested in was not infamous quips but the effects of the analyses after the debate.

Students watched and were then assigned to either watch the analysis or a filler program. We found that analyses damped partisan reactions, which kinda worked opposite of what we expected. With selective attention we figured hearing about the debates would lead to more extreme feelings either way, depending on your predispositions. Theory said so. Instead we found hearing people from both sides talking about the debate actually reduced extreme opinions.

Needless to say this was opposite what most others found and a book later on debates attacked that study. Hell, we were grad students, making it up as we went. The research ended up as a conference paper but never in publication. Probably best for all.

Negative Ads and What People Know

Those negative advertisements that every voter hates and every candidate uses are said to be effective. "We don't like them," goes the standard line, "but they work."

Think again, according to a careful meta-analysis of the literature:

To state the matter bluntly: There is no consistent evidence in the research literature that negative political campaigning “works” in achieving the electoral results that attackers desire. Although attacks probably do undermine evaluations of the candidates they target, they usually bring evaluations of the attackers down even more, and the net effect on vote choice is nil.

That's a helluva finding, but I doubt you'll see a sudden end to negative ads. We're addicted to them. They energize the base, they provide conversation fodder. They give the talking heads on the boob tube something to talk about.

The results on political knowledge are more consistent, with 11 of 15 studies showing that negative ads increase what people know about a campaign. I'm not sure that's good news, but it is something. This reminds me of the knowledge gap literature, which in part finds that controversy spurs learning. Negative ads get attention, which increases knowledge.

But, according to this study, they simply don't persuade.