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University Daily Kansan
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Tuesday, March 9, 1965
( V , V , V , V )
Grad Student Gets Chance to Test Theory
Ed Scheff is one KU student whose interest in the recent election was more than political. This election gave Ed, a graduate student from Queens, New York, a chance to test "the semantic differential as a predictor of voting behavior," the subject of his doctoral dissertation. (He's planning to receive a Ph.D. in Speech in June.)
Scheff thinks that the method would eliminate some of the polling errors such as those that led to the Literary Digest's prediction that Alf Landon would win over FDR and the incorrect prediction made by professional pollsters that Thomas Dewey would defeat Harry Truman. Community Studies, Inc., Kansas City, Mo., also became interested in his device and gave him a research grant with which to test it.
The "SEMANTIC differential method of polling" is explained by Scheff this way.
It may be viewed as a measure of attitude. It rests on the assumption that the voter's attitudes toward the issues and the candidates will, in large part, determine the way he votes.
Scheff first had to discover the concepts (issues and candidates) about which the voters would have formed attitudes. His sources of concepts were the campaign statements and platforms of the candidates. He selected the concepts on the basis of their apparent significance to the campaign as judged by how often they were mentioned by various candidates and news commentators on radio and television and in the Kansas City Star editorial and news columns. Other concepts were chosen from those that were contained in or suggested by the speeches and statements made at the two national party conventions.
The major concepts that he came up with were: Bobby Baker, John Birch Society and the Americans for
More NDEA Grants Set
William P. Albrecht, dean of the KU Graduate School, has announced that 24 National Defense Fellowships worth about $125,000 have been allotted for graduate work for each of the next three years.
Earlier KU had received 27 new National Defense Fellowships for 1965-66, bringing the total of new fellows to 51. These, with fellows eligible to return from earlier years, will bring the total on campus next year to 95. Nearly one-half million dollars will be involved in the total projects.
THE GROUP of 24 fellowships will be spread among botany, English, French, electrical engineering, entomology, mathematics, psychology, sociology and Spanish-Portugese.
Some of the fellows have already been selected, Albrecht said.
"However, we are bound by a ruling of the National Association of Graduate Schools not to announce their names until April 1," he said.
"KU has been receiving fellowships from the NDEA since 1958-59. We have no national figures on this year yet, but we received more than we ever have before. But, of course, more were offered this year."
First year fellows will receive stipends of $2,000 plus an allowance of $400 for each dependent. Stipends for the following years will be $2,200 and $2,400. KU will receive institutional funds of $2,500 for each fellow from which his fees and other expenses of the program will be paid.
Democratic Action (extremism), racial demonstrations (safety in the streets), William E. Miller, Republican Party, Warren E. Hearnes, Ethan Shepley, Hubert H. Humphrey, Lyndon B. Johnson, use of nuclear weapons, federal power, Barry M. Goldwater, and the Democratic Party.
THESE CONCEPTS were measured on eleven scales of values: dirty-clean, strong-weak, dangerous-safe, peaceful-warlike, unfair-fair, deep-shallow, active-passive, liberal-conservative, responsible-ir-responsible, foolish-wise, and realistic-unrealistic. Scheff determined some of the scales from other research and the rest of the scales from what seemed appropriate to this campaign.
Between the two words on the scale are seven blanks. When the voter marks the blank closest to either end of the scale it indicates that he thinks the concept is very closely related to that end of the scale. If the voter feels that the candidate or issue is quite closely related (but not extremely) he marks the second blank from either end of the scale. A mark in the third blank
from either end of the scale means that the candidate or issue is only slightly related (but not really neutral) to one of the terms on the scale. If the voter considers the candidate or issue to be neutral on the scale, both sides of the scale equally associated with the concept, or if he considers the scale completely unrelated to the concept, he will place his checkmark in the middle space.
Scheff decided that the best way he could test this method of attitude measurement as a voting predictor was to limit his area of research and try it out in a genuine election situation. So, he chose the Kansas City, Mo., area in which to conduct his study.
IT TOOK about 230 hours (equivalent to nearly six work weeks) for Scheff, some graduate student friends in the Speech and other departments, and twelve professional pollsters to conduct the poll. They made two visits to each of 100 registered voters selected at random from the research territory.
On the first visit just after the Democratic Party Convention, voters were asked merely to complete the
semantic differential described above. The pollsters mentioned nothing about voting. (Scheff comments that the voters present their attitudes more honestly when they don't know their voting intent is being solicited).
The pollsters made their second visit on Election Day and again they administered the semantic differential. Afterwards they asked the voter for such information as age, education, income, occupation, religion, political party preference, sources of information on the election, degree of interest in the election, for whom they voted, and why they voted as they did.
SCHEFF IS RELIEVED that all of the data is gathered. However, his work is, in a way, just beginning. He's now programming the data for the computer. Only after the mechanical brain processes the information will he know the accuracy of his pollling device. He's hoping also to find some correlation between the reasons people voted as they did and their backgrounds (age, education, etc.).
Scheff can already name some advantages of his polling device. It avoids the problems of bias of results that arise from; the voter's reluctance to admit lack of information or opinion, the relatively high percentage of undecided voters, and the voter's reluctance to admit that he has changed his mind after having once committed himself to an opinion. The voter need not commit himself because the semantic differential does not elicit a commitment. The instrument is not likely to obtain answers that the voter thinks the interviewer would like. Furthermore, the test is not easy for the voter to "see through" because it is unlike tests he is likely to have experienced and because there are no right or wrong answers. He feels the main advantage is that it suggests "why" the voter voted as he did.
Scheff doesn't plan to use the technique professionally. After he graduates, Scheff, his wife Helene, and their two children will live in a town where Scheff hopes to be on the Speech Department faculty of a university.
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