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What do political scientists think about research ethics? What research practices do they find acceptable? Using a survey conducted with the American Political Science Association, we explore perceptions of ethics among 362 political scientists. We find that political scientists do not place much relative weight on ethics when evaluating research. We do, however, find that researchers view different modes of inquiry as having different potential harms. Furthermore, using a conjoint experiment, we find that factors like author affiliation, study location, method, and sample size shape evaluations of study ethicality. Our results contribute to the growing body of metascience by expanding understanding of ethics in political science research.

Gun violence is a large and growing problem in the United States. Many reformers look towards elections to spur policy change in this area. In this paper, we explore the effects of school shootings on electoral mobilization and election outcomes. We pair data from several sources that measure validated voter registration; validated voter turnout; and the electoral performance of officials at the local, state, and federal levels with regression discontinuity and panel methods. Our effects show that shootings have little to no effect on electoral outcomes in the United States. Our work demonstrates that even when tragic events occur that are squarely in the realm of elected officials' responsibility, have high levels of issue salience, are highly-covered by the media, draw citizens' attention, and (perhaps) shift public opinion, these seemingly favorable conditions may not be enough to elicit democratic accountability.

Despite clear evidence of a sharp income gradient in voting participation, it remains unclear whether income truly causes voting. In this article, we investigate how exogenous increases in unearned income affect voting in U.S. elections for two generations (parents and children) from the same household. In contrast to predictions made by current models of voting, we find the income shock had no effect on parents' voting behaviors. However, we also find that increasing household income has heterogeneous effects on the civic participation of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. It increases children's voting propensity among those raised in initially poorer families—resulting in substantially narrowed participatory gaps. Our results are consistent with a more nuanced view of how individual resources affect patterns of voting than the dominant theoretical framework of voting—the resource model—allows. Voting is fundamentally shaped by the human capital accrued long before citizens are eligible to vote.

AbstractAlthough public administration scholars have long studied discrimination on the basis of race/ethnicity,class,and gender,little to no research exists on whether street‐level bureaucrats provide differential services based on the religious identity of their constituents. This article reports the results from a large‐scale correspondence study of street‐level bureaucrats in the American public school system. The authors emailed the principals of a large sample of public schools and asked for a meeting,randomly assigning the religious (non)affiliation of the family. To get at potential causal mechanisms,religious belief intensity was also randomly assigned. The findings show evidence of substantial discrimination against Muslims and atheists on a par with,and sometimes larger than,the racial discrimination found in previous studies. These individuals are substantially less likely to receive a response,with discrimination growing when they signal that their beliefs are more intense. Protestants and Catholics face no discrimination unless they signal that their religious beliefs are intense.

Is the media biased against conservatives? Although a dominant majority of journalists identify as liberals/Democrats and many Americans and public officials frequently decry supposedly high and increasing levels of media bias, little compelling evidence exists as to (i) the ideological or partisan leanings of the many journalists who fail to answer surveys and/or identify as independents and (ii) whether journalists' political leanings bleed into the choice of which stories to cover that Americans ultimately consume. Using a unique combination of a large-scale survey of political journalists, data from journalists' Twitter networks, election returns, a large-scale correspondence experiment, and a conjoint survey experiment, we show definitively that the media exhibits no bias against conservatives (or liberals for that matter) in what news that they choose to cover. This shows that journalists' individual ideological leanings have unexpectedly little effect on the vitally important, but, up to this point, unexplored, early stage of political news generation.

AbstractThis article explores the origins of youth engagement in school, community and democracy. Specifically, it considers the role of psychosocial or non-cognitive abilities, like grit or perseverance. Using a novel original large-scale longitudinal survey of students linked to school administrative records and a variety of modeling techniques – including sibling, twin and individual fixed effects – the study finds that psychosocial abilities are a strong predictor of youth civic engagement. Gritty students miss less class time and are more engaged in their schools, are more politically efficacious, are more likely to intend to vote when they become eligible, and volunteer more. Our work highlights the value of psychosocial attributes in the political socialization of young people.

Abstract
As public mass shootings continue to plague the United States, a growing scholarly literature seeks to understand the political effects of these tragic events. This literature, however, focuses on public opinion or turnout and vote choice, leaving open to question whether or not public mass shootings affect a range of other important actions citizens may take to engage with gun policy. Leveraging the as-good-as random timing of high-publicity public mass shootings over the past decade and an immense array of publicly available and proprietary data, we demonstrate that these events consistently cause surges in public engagement with gun policy—including internet searches, streaming documentaries, discussion on social media, signing petitions, and donating to political action committees. Importantly, we document the behaviors where shootings induce polarizing upswings in engagement and those where upswings skew toward gun control. Finally, we demonstrate that low-publicity shootings largely exert little-to-no effect on our outcomes.