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By Posted on Posted in Race No Comments

Journals requiring the posting of data and code for published articles is a major improvement in the conduct of social science because it increases the ability of researchers to assess the correctness and robustness of reported results and because it presumably produces more careful analyses by researchers aware that their data and code will be made public.

But the DA-RT agreement to "[r]equire authors to ensure that cited data are available at the time of publication through a trusted digital repository" does not address selective reporting. For example, the current replication policy for the journal Political Behavior requires only that "[a]uthors of accepted manuscripts will be required to deposit all of the data and script files needed to replicate the published results in a trusted data repository such as ICPSR or Dataverse" (emphasis added).

This permits researchers to selectively report experiments, experimental conditions, and potential outcome variables, and to then delete the corresponding data from the dataset that is made public. Readers thus often cannot be sure whether the reported research has been selectively reported.

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Consider uncertainty about the survey experiment reported in Filindra and Kaplan 2016, described in the article's abstract as follows (p. 255):

To determine whether racial prejudice depresses white support for gun control, we designed a priming experiment which exposed respondents to pictures of blacks and whites drawn from the IAT. Results show that exposure to the prime suppressed support for gun control compared to the control, conditional upon a respondent's level of racial resentment.

But here is a description of the experimental treatment (p. 261):

Under the guise of a cognitive test, we exposed 600 survey participants who self-identified as white to three pictures of the faces of black individuals and another three of white individuals.

I wasn't sure why a survey experiment intended "[t]o determine whether racial prejudice depresses white support for gun control" would have as its only treatment a prime that consisted of photos of both blacks and whites. It seems more logical for a "racial prejudice" experiment to have one condition in which participants were shown photos of blacks and another condition in which participants were shown photos of whites; then responses to gun control items that followed the photo primes could be compared for the black photo and white photo conditions.

Readers of Filindra and Kaplan 2016 might suspect that there were unreported experimental conditions in which participants were shown photos of blacks or were shown photos of whites. But readers cannot know from the article whether there were unreported conditions.

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I didn't know of an easier way to eliminate the uncertainty about whether there were unreported conditions in Filindra and Kaplan 2016 other than asking the researchers, so I sent the corresponding author an email asking about the presence of unreported experimental conditions involving items about guns and photos of blacks and/or whites. Dr. Filindra indicated that there were no unreported conditions involving photos of blacks and/or whites, but there were unreported conditions for non-photo conditions that are planned for forthcoming work.

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My correspondence with Dr. Filindra made me more confident in their reported results, but such correspondence is a suboptimal way to increase confidence in reported results: it took time from Drs. Filindra and Kaplan and from me, and the information from our correspondence is, as far as I am aware, available only to persons reading this blog post.

There are multiple ways for journals and researchers to remove uncertainty about selective reporting and thus increase research transparency, such as journals requiring the posting of all collected data, journals requiring researchers to make disclosures about the lack of selective reporting, and researchers preregistering plans to collect and analyze data.

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By Posted on Posted in Methods No Comments

In the Political Behavior article, "The Public's Anger: White Racial Attitudes and Opinions Toward Health Care Reform", Antoine J. Banks presented evidence that "anger uniquely pushes racial conservatives to be more opposing of health care reform while it triggers more support among racial liberals" (p. 493). Here is how the outcome variable was measured in the article's reported analysis (p. 511):

Health Care Reform is a dummy variable recoded 0-1 with 1 equals opposition to reform. The specific item is "As of right now, do you favor or oppose Barack Obama and the Democrats' Health Care reform bill". The response options were yes = I favor the health care bill or no = I oppose the health care bill.

However, the questionnaire for the study indicates that there were multiple items used to measure opinions of health care reform:

W2_1. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling Health Care? Please indicate whether you approve strongly, approve somewhat, neither approve nor disapprove, disapprove somewhat, or disapprove strongly.

W2_2. As of right now, do you favor or oppose Barack Obama and the Democrats' Health Care reform bill?

[if "favor" on W2_2] W2_2a. Do you favor Barack Obama and the Democrats' Health Care reform bill very strongly, or not so strongly?

[if "oppose" on W2_2] W2_2b. Do you oppose Barack Obama and the Democrats' Health Care reform bill very strongly, or not so strongly?

The bold item above is the only item reported on as an outcome variable in the article. The reported analysis omitted results for one outcome variable (W2_1) and reported dichotomous results for the other outcome variable (W2_2) for which the apparent intention was to have a four-pronged outcome variable from oppose strongly to favor strongly.

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Here is the manuscript that I submitted to Political Behavior in March 2015 describing the results using the presumed intended outcome variables and a straightforward research design (e.g., no political discussion control, no exclusion of cases, cases from all conditions analyzed at the same time). Here's the main part of the main figure:

Banks2014Reproduction

The takeaway is that, with regard to opposition to health care reform, the effect of the fear condition on symbolic racism differed at a statistically significant level from the effect of the baseline relaxed condition on symbolic racism; however, contra Banks 2014, the effect of anger on symbolic racism did not differ at a statistically significant level from the effect of the relaxed condition on symbolic racism. The anger condition had a positive effect on symbolic racism, but it was not a unique influence.

The submission to Political Behavior was rejected after peer review. Comments suggested analyzing the presumed intended outcome variables while using the research design choices in Banks 2014. Using the model in Table 2 column 1 of Banks 2014, the fear interaction term and the fear condition term are statistically significant at p<0.05 for predicting the two previously-unreported non-dichotomous outcome variables and for predicting the scale of these two variables; the anger interaction term and the anger condition term are statistically significant at p<0.05 for predicting two of these three outcome variables, with p-values for the residual "Obama handling" outcome variable at roughly 0.10. The revised manuscript describing these results is here.

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Data are here, and code for the initial submission is here.

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Antoine Banks has published several studies on anger and racial politics (here, for example) that should be considered when making inferences about the substance of the effect of anger on racial attitudes. Banks had a similar article published in the AJPS, with Nicholas Valentino. Data for that article are here. I did not see any problems with that analysis, but I didn't look very hard, because the posted data were not the raw data: the posted data that I checked omitted, for example, the variables used to construct the outcome variable.

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By Posted on Posted in Race No Comments

Here are four items typically used to measure symbolic racism, in which respondents are asked to indicate their level of agreement with the statements:

1. Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.

2. Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.

3. Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve.

4. It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites.

These four items are designed such that an antiblack racist would tend to respond the same way as a non-racist principled conservative. Many researchers realize this conflation problem and make an effort to account for this conflation. For example, here is an excerpt from Rabinowitz, Sears, Sidanius, and Krosnick 2010, explaining how responses to symbolic racism items might be influenced in part by non-racial values:

Adherence to traditional values—without concomitant racial prejudice—could drive Whites' responses to SR [symbolic racism] measures and their opinions on racial policy issues. For example, Whites' devotion to true equality may lead them to oppose what they might view as inherently inequitable policies, such as affirmative action, because it provides advantages for some social groups and not others. Similarly affirmative action may be perceived to violate the traditional principle of judging people on their merits, not their skin color. Consequently, opposition to such policies may result from their perceived violation of widely and closely held principles rather than racism.

However, this nuance is sometimes lost. Here is an excerpt from the Pasek, Krosnick, and Tompson 2012 manuscript that was discussed by the Associated Press shortly before the 2012 presidential election:

Explicit racial attitudes were gauged using questions designed to measure "Symbolic Racism" (Henry & Sears, 2002).

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The proportion of Americans expressing explicit anti-Black attitudes held steady between 47.6% in 2008 and 47.3% in 2010, and increased slightly and significantly to 50.9% in 2012.

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See here and here for a discussion of the Pasek et al. 2012 manuscript.

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By Posted on Posted in Methods 2 Comments

I blogged here about inferential problems in the typical symbolic racism research study, which measures symbolic racism with these items:

1. Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.

2. Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.

3. Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve.

4. It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites.

One inferential problem is that the above items cannot differentiate racial bias from non-racial beliefs and attitudes; for example, a respondent might oppose special favors for blacks because that respondent is racist or because that respondent opposes special favors in general.

Symbolic racism research has typically addressed this inferential problem through statistical control, tossing into a regression such variables as partisanship, self-identified ideology, or specific conservative beliefs. But the working manuscript here provided evidence that statistical control does not always isolate the racial component of symbolic racism.

The TESS proposal that I recently submitted tried to isolate the racial component of symbolic racism through a survey experiment: a randomly-selected half of white respondents would receive the traditional symbolic racism items, and the other half would receive an adjusted set of items, such as "Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other groups overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Poor whites should do the same without any special favors." The idea would be to compare support for the traditional item to support for the adjusted item to assess how much responses differ due to the target mentioned in the item (blacks or poor whites).

I did not originate this idea: Paul Sniderman and Edward Carmines reported a survey that did the same exact thing, but which used "new immigrants from Europe" in the special favors item (see p. 199 here, but the survey is reported in other publications, too). However, as far as I can tell, that survey experiment concerned only the special favors symbolic racism item; the purpose of the proposed experiment is to assess the racial component of the entire battery of symbolic racism items.

Benefits of the survey experiment measurement of symbolic racism are resources saved (no need to include control items) and stronger inference. Ideally, adjusted items could reflect the race or ethnicity of each respondent, such as poor Hispanics or poor Asians instead of poor whites.

Here is the proposal for TESS, which was rejected. Comments are welcome.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Race No Comments

I have posted a working manuscript on symbolic racism here, with its appendix here. Comments are welcome and appreciated. I'll outline the manuscript below and give some background to the research.

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On 27 October 2012, a Facebook friend posted a link to an Associated Press report "AP poll: Majority harbor prejudice against blacks." I posted this comment about the report:

sr1

During the Facebook discussion, I noted that it not obvious that the implicit measurements indicate racism, given the data on implicit preferences among blacks:

sr2

Bob Somersby at the Daily Howler noticed that the AP report provided data disaggregated by political party but failed to provide data disaggregated by race:

Although Ross and Agiesta were eager to tell you how many Democrats, Republicans and independents were shown to hold "anti-black feelings," they never tell you how many black respondents “hold anti-black feelings” as well!

Why didn't our intrepid reporters give us that information? We can't answer that question. But even a mildly skeptical observer could imagine one possible answer:

If substantial percentages of black respondents were allegedly shown to "hold anti-black feelings," that would make almost anyone wonder how valid the AP's measures may be. It would undermine confidence in the professors—in those men of vast erudition, the orange-shoed fellows who still seem to think that Obama trailed in the national polling all through the summer of 2008.

David Moore at iMediaEthics posted data disaggregated by race that he retrieved from the lead author of the study: based on the same method used in the original report, 30 percent of white Americans implicitly held anti-white sentiments, and 43 percent of black Americans implicitly held anti-black sentiments. Moore discussed how this previously-unreported information alters interpretation of the study's findings:

It appears that racism, as measured by this process, is much more complicated than the news story would suggest. We cannot talk about the 56% of Americans with "anti-black" attitudes as being "racist," if we do not also admit that close to half of all blacks are also "racist" – against their own race.

If we accept the measures of anti-black attitudes as a valid indicator of racism, then we also have to accept the anti-white measures as racism.

Moore did not tell us the results for black respondents on the explicit measures of racism, so that's the impetus behind Study 2 of the working manuscript.

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The explicit racism measure discussed in the AP report is symbolic racism, also known as racial resentment. Instead of explaining what symbolic racism is, I'll show how symbolic racism is typically measured; items below are from the American National Election Studies, but there were more items in the study discussed in the AP report.

Symbolic racism is measured in the ANES based on whether a survey respondent agrees strongly, agrees somewhat, neither agrees nor disagrees, disagrees somewhat, or disagrees strongly with these four items:

1. Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.

2. Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.

3. Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve.

4. It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites.

I hope that you can see why these are not really measures of explicit racism. Let's say that non-racist person A opposes special favors for all groups: that person would select the symbolic racist option for item 1, indicating a belief that blacks should work their way up without special favors. Person A is coded the same as a person B who opposes special favors for blacks because of person B's racism. So that's problem #1 with symbolic racism measures: the measures conflate racial attitudes and non-racial beliefs.

But notice that there is another problem. Let's say that person C underestimates the influence of slavery and discrimination on outcomes for contemporary blacks; person C will select a symbolic racism option for item 2, but is that racism? is that racial animosity? is that a reflection that a non-black person -- and even some black persons -- might not appreciate the legacy of slavery and discrimination? or is that something else? That's problem #2 with symbolic racism measures: it's not obvious how to interpret these measures.

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Researchers typically address problem 1 with control variables; the hope is that placing partisanship, self-reported ideology, and a few conservative values items into a regression sufficiently dilutes the non-racial component of symbolic racism so that the effect of symbolic racism can be interpreted as its racial component only.

In the first part of the working manuscript, I test this hope by predicting non-racial dependent variables, such as opposition to gay marriage. The idea of this test is that -- if statistical control really does sufficiently dilute the non-racial component of symbolic racism -- then symbolic racism should not correlate with opposition to gay marriage, because racism should not be expected to correlate with opposition to gay marriage; but -- if there is a correlation between symbolic racism and gay marriage -- then statistical control did not sufficiently dilute the non-racial component of symbolic racism.

The results indicate that a small set of controls often does not sufficiently dilute the non-racial component of symbolic racism, so results from symbolic racism research with a small set of controls should be treated skeptically. But a more extensive set of controls often does sufficiently dilute the non-racial component of symbolic racism, so we can place more -- but not complete -- confidence in results from symbolic racism research with an extensive set of controls.

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The way that I addressed problem #2 -- about how to interpret symbolic racism measures -- is to assess the effect of symbolic racism among black respondents. Results indicate that among blacks -- and even among a set of black respondents with quite positive views of their own racial group -- symbolic racism sometimes positively correlates with opposition to policies to help blacks.

Study 2 suggests that it is not legitimate for researchers to interpret symbolic racism among whites differently than symbolic racism among blacks, without some other information that can permit us to state that symbolic racism means something different for blacks and whites. Study 3 assesses whether there is evidence that symbolic racism means something different for blacks and whites.

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