1. Political Participation in America: the Role of Race and Gender Leslie Bracy SOCI 5013

2. Political Concerns Equality *Politicians pay attention to those groups which donate money, volunteer for campaign work and vote *If one group does this more, then public policy is shifted in their favor

3. Previous Research Rosenstone and Hansen (1992) Politicians target people who have a great deal of education and money to participate in politics. Leads to inequality, because those variables tend to favor White men.

4. Previous Research Verba, Schlozman and Brady (1993) People who vote and participate in politics tend to be in higher education and income brackets - but this is what drives them to participate. Still, these variables tend to favor White men.

5. Verba’s Findings Women and minorities have a significant gap in political participation, due to the fact that they are less educated and in lower income brackets.

6. Verba’s Findings Men and women are motivated by different political concerns: *Men are motivated by defense and tax issues *Women are motivated by education, environment, and abortion issues.

7. Verba’s Findings Race is also important to motivation and political concerns. *Minorities tend to be more concerned with affirmative action issues and issues dealing with on-the-job equality and basic human needs

8. Present Political Concerns Verba demonstrated differences in policy concerns between races and gender. Also demonstrated how differences in income and education shape policy concerns and political participation.

9. My Research I want to compare White, African American and Latino women. Voting Campaign Contributions Volunteering for Political Campaigns How does income and education affect these?

10. Data Will use the same data as Verba. Citizen Participatory Study Data gathered by the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago and Public Opinion Laboratory at Northwestern Illinois University

11. Data Citizen Participatory Study Two stage study Stage One: 15 -20 minute telephone interviews with 15, 023 randomly selected adults in a national pool. Stage Two: Two-hour in person interviews with 2, 517 of the stage one respondents. Weighted to get a nationally representative sample.

12. Data in the Study Respondents were asked about: Income and Education Policy Preferences Avenues of Political Participation Sorted according to Race, Ethnicity and Gender

13. Methods Multivariate Regression Models Income Education Race Gender Interactive Combination Variables

14. Methods Multivariate Regression Models Campaign Contributions Campaign Volunteering Voting

15. Methods Multivariate Regression Models Other variables to test for reliability Age Religiosity Children at Home How Liberal or Conservative

16. Strengths of Data and Methods Responsible data-gathering Weighted to accurately reflect minority population in America Oversampled politically active people Using Verba’s analytical framework

17. Weaknesses of Data and Methods The data is pre-1992 elections New data suggests an ever expanding role for women and minorities in politics that will not be reflected here in this data.