The Different Effects of PAC Funding Refusal Based on Candidate Race and Gender. 

with Olivia Taylor Neff

Political scholarship has demonstrated that Americans want to reduce the influence of big money in politics, such as through PAC (Political Action Committee) funding. However, research on PAC funding presents ambiguous results for both the identity of the judge (the voters evaluating candidates) and the identity of the candidate (candidates with explicit racial and gender descriptors). The effect of this oversight is twofold. First, we assume that all Americans prefer PAC-free candidates. Second, we do not know how racialized and gendered evaluations intersect with the desire to have a more even political playing field where voters are represented instead of big donors. This research examines that intersection by applying a vignette experiment to a sample of 1,700 U.S. adults. First, I find that Republican respondents exhibit no preference for PAC-free candidates over PAC-funded ones. Second, I find that refusing PAC funding provides a significant boost in support for White candidates, but not Black candidates. Furthermore, my causal mediation analysis demonstrates that White candidates who refuse PAC funds are seen as “working for the people” as opposed to big donors, while the same effect is not found for Black candidates. These findings have implications for our understanding of racialized and gendered moral evaluations of political candidates.  

Manuscript available upon request

Experimental Evidence for the Effects of Race and Incivility on Voter Choice. 

Sociologists are fundamentally concerned with the way an individual’s identity, especially their race, inform evaluations of their behavior. Yet, sociological insights from decades of empirical and theoretical advancements have been under-utilized to inform conversations on contemporary U.S. politics, especially in the context of increasing political incivility. Specifically, political theorists have argued that preferences for white or non-white racial categories explain racial minorities’ performance in U.S. elections. I argue that Americans respond differently to political candidates’ behavior depending on the race of the candidate with heterogeneity across non-white racial categories. I apply this argument to a conjoint experimental setting centered on testing the impact of uncivil political behavior. I administered the experiment to more than 3,000 individuals across two samples of U.S. adults from the Cooperative Election Study and Prolific Academic, Ltd. I measure the effects of civil versus uncivil statements (critiques versus lies and insults) for Asian, Black, Latino, and white political candidates. Notably, I find that when candidates behave civilly and when they lie, respondents’ candidate racial preferences are minimized. It is among candidates who insult their opponents that race explains preferences with stereotype-breaking behavior by Asian and Latino candidates being rewarded most. Black and white candidates who insult their opponents are penalized. I discuss implications for the racialized perceptions of political candidates in the U.S., focusing on where existing theories explain these results and where they fail to do so.

Manuscript available upon request

Civility in Congress: Demonstrating Organizational Change Through Automated Text Analysis.

Do Congress members become more civil over the course of their tenure? I address this question using an automated text analysis of 35 years of the daily Congressional Record. My results reveal two conflicting trends. First, while older cohorts did increase their use of polite language, more recent cohorts do not increase their polite language over the course of their tenure. Second, older cohorts and men use polite language at higher rates than newer cohorts and women. However, women and newer cohorts use more prosocial language than men and older cohorts. These shifts reveal changes in both the relative value of traditional measures of civility and the limited power of organizational influence on member behavior in Congress.  

Manuscript available upon request

Dudley, Jennifer, Moshoula Capous Desyllas, Theresa Cisneros, Nayeli Perez, and David Boyns.  "Understanding the strengths and challenges of grandparent caregivers raising children and youth: Creating community through informal culture." The Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26408066.2022.2159778

Grandparents are increasingly finding themselves taking care of their grandchildren for various reasons, including their adult child’s incarceration, mental health issues, drug and alcohol addiction, or child abuse or neglect. The purpose of this mixed-methods needs-assessment research study was to highlight the caregiving experiences of custodial grandparents and to identify their unique set of needs, strengths, and challenges. Recruiting from a support network known as Grandparents as Parents (GAP), we invited grandparent caregivers to participate in surveys, focus groups and a photovoice project in order to identify the types of services they received, their unmet needs and their lived experiences in their role as a grandparent caregiver. Findings highlight the increasing number of custodial grandparents who create an informal community among caregivers to address their unmet needs. We advocate for a multi-disciplinary approach, including the implementation of formal kinship navigation services prior to the placement of children with their grandparents.

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Stoltz, Dustin, Marshall Taylor, and Jennifer S.K. Dudley. “Dictionaries and Distances: A Tool Kit for Relation Induction in Text Analysis.” Sociological Methods and Research. 

Distances derived from word embeddings can measure a range of gradational relations—similarity, hierarchy, entailment, and stereotype—and can be used at the document-and author-level in ways that overcome some of the limitations of weighted dictionary methods. We provide a comprehensive introduction to using word embeddings for relation induction, and demonstrate how such techniques can complement dictionary methods as unsupervised, deductive methods.

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