Government Quiz 5
According to the 2012 American National Election Study (ANES), about ____ percent of Americans believe the government should permit abortions in many, if not all, instances.
61
Generally, the first agent of political socialization that people are exposed to is
family
The major agents of early socialization in the United States are
family, school, community, and peers
A sample of six hundred randomly selected individuals is usually accurate to (plus or minus)
five percent points
The Framers guessed that the __________ would reflect public opinion, especially on the crucial issues of taxes and government spending.
house of representatives
The contemporary political "gender gap" refers to the tendency of women to
identify more with the democratic party than men do.
The set of values and beliefs that a person holds about the purpose and scope of government is called
political ideology
The process whereby one becomes aware of politics, learns political facts, and forms political values is called
political socialization
The first political institution that young children tend to focus on is the
president
The ______________ principle indicates that what is learned first is learned best
primacy
The extent to which any socializing agent is influential depends on
prolonged exposure to and good communication with the agent, as well as being receptive
The political knowledge of many young adults changes from high school to college if the college student's education includes
questioning established values
A distribution of opinions that shows little change over time is a
stable
Today, the mass media conduct most polls by
telephone
The basic definition of public opinion is
the collected attitudes of citizens on a given issue or question
Pressure on an individual to conform to community values or views is strongest when
the community is homogeneous
One critique that pluralists make of the public as a whole is that
the public seldom demonstrates clear, consistent opinions on daily issues of government
Public opinion polls can be criticized on the grounds that
the way a pollster words a question can determine the answer
The goal of the statistical theory of sampling is
to reflect the views of the population with some predictable degree of accuracy.
Learning political party identification from parents is known as the ___________ model of partisanship.
transmission
When elementary schools introduce students to authority figures outside the family, like the teacher, they prepare students for the value of _________; when they stress norms of democratic decision making and respecting the opinions of others, they teach _________.
order; equality
As students move from elementary school to high school, their political socialization tends to transition from knowledge of ________ to development of _________.
patriotic ritual; good citizenship
Which of the following statements concerning gender and political beliefs is incorrect?
women are more likely to favor going to war
A libertarian is most likely to exhibit the characteristics of
high income; high education
According to the text, which of the following is not a characteristic of public opinion?
(WRONG?)governments do not tend to respond to public opinion
A typical Gallup national poll surveys approximately _______ individuals.
1,500
Survey methodology did not become a powerful research tool until the
1950's
Historians estimate that _____ percent of Americans supported the Revolution in July 1776.
40
A January 2014 poll showed that ____ percent of Americans knew that the Affordable Care Act prohibits companies from denying health insurance to people because of any illnesses they may have.
54
One of the nation's oldest polls, the __________, was started in the 1930s, and was most notably wrong in 1948 when it predicted that Thomas Dewey, the Republican candidate, would defeat the Democratic incumbent, Harry Truman in the presidential election.
Gallup Poll
Which of the following statements reflects the role public opinion should play according to the majoritarian model of democracy?
Government should do what a majority of the public wants.
Which of the following statements concerning ideological "moderates" is correct?
Many people identify as "moderate" because they do not understand the alternatives.
The accuracy of the population sample used for public opinion polls depends on
Randomness of selection, size of sample, and variation in the population
About _______ of immigrants in America are undocumented.
a third
As parental and school influences wane in adulthood, _________ emerge as more important socialization agents.
adult peer groups and the mass media
Young Americans are more reliably socialized into their parents' religions when
both parents follow the same religion
Children are likely to adopt their parents' party identification when
both parents strongly identify with the same party.
In a 2012 election survey, respondents were asked whether abortion should be outlawed by government or a matter of personal choice, and whether government should guarantee people a job and a good standard of living or people should get ahead on their own. People's responses to the two questions
demonstrated that these value choices cannot be explained by a one-dimensional liberal-conservative continuum.
In the current American context, a liberal would tend to promote
economic equality ahead of freedom, and freedom ahead of social order
A respondent who agrees with the statement, "By law, a woman should be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice" values
freedom over order
As a general trend, college-educated individuals are more likely to choose
freedom over social order
Individuals with higher education and income tend to favor _______ over ________.
freedom; order or equality
Which of the following statements concerning Latinos is incorrect?
latinos are a racial group
In nineteen presidential elections since 1936, Gallup polls have deviated from actual results by
less than 1.0 percent point.
People who are not religious are more likely to be categorized as
libertarian
Lack of political knowledge among individual Americans makes the ___________ model more difficult to sustain.
majoritarian
When sampled, the public strongly favors the death penalty for certain crimes. The graph of such a distribution would be characterized as
skewed
When Americans are asked to identify themselves on left-right ideological scales ("liberal," "moderate," or "conservative"), the data plotted on a graph is a(n)
skewed distribution (WRONG)
Since surveying the American public about ideology began, the ideological distribution of the public has become
skewed toward conservatism