Polit Behav

DOI 10.1007/s11109-007-9035-8

ORIGINAL PAPER

Measuring Exposure to Political Advertising in Surveys

Daniel Stevens

Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007

Abstract Research on the influence of negative political advertising in America is

characterized by fundamentally conflicting findings. In recent years, however,
survey research using estimates of exposure based on a combination of self-reported
television viewing habits and Campaign Media Analysis Group data (a database of
all advertisements broadcast on national and cable television in the top 75 media
markets) has argued that exposure to negative political advertising boosts interest in
the campaign and turnout. This paper examines the measurement properties of self-
reports of television viewing. I argue that the errors from common survey formats
may both be nonrandom and larger than previously acknowledged. The nonrandom
error is due to the tendency of politically knowledgeable individuals to be more
sensitive to question format. Thus the inferences drawn about the relationship be-
tween political knowledge, exposure to negative ads, and political behavior are also
sensitive to the measures used to estimate exposure. I demonstrate, however, that
one commonly used measure of exposure—the log of estimated exposure—is not
only more theoretically defensible but also alleviates some of the more serious
problems due to measurement error.

Keywords Political advertising
Measurement error
Self-reported television

viewing
Survey research

The influence of political advertising campaigns in American elections, especially

the negativity of ads, remains a subject of great interest and controversy. Geer
(2006, 10) notes that in the last two months of the 2000 election, the Associated
Press alone filed 95 stories on negative campaigning, while Brooks’ (2006) more

D. Stevens (&)
Department of Politics, University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus, Penryn, Cornwall,
TR10 9EZ, England
e-mail: danielpstevens@yahoo.com

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comprehensive search uncovered 410 articles on the relationship between campaign

tone and turnout from 1994 to 2005. The flurry of results has not resulted in
consistent findings, however. Lau, Sigelman, Heldman, and Babbitt’s (1999) meta-
analysis, which examined findings from studies of the effects of negative ads
between 1984 and 1999, uncovered a panoply of conflicting results and arguments.
While scholars agree that negativity is increasingly prevalent in campaigns, the flow
of research findings since Lau et al. remains contradictory (Clinton & Lapinski,
2004; Goldstein & Freedman, 2002a, Goldstein & Freedman, 2002b; Kahn &
Kenney, 2004; Stevens, 2005). Some argue that the conflict is due to different
research designs. As Martin puts it (2004, 545–546), ‘‘Evidence supporting the idea
that negative campaigning discourages voter turnout comes primarily through
experimental research, whereas evidence supporting the idea that negative
campaigning encourages voter turnout comes from survey research.’’ This assumes
that disagreement stems from differences in the set-up of experiments and survey
research; it ignores problems within particular research designs.
This paper argues that there are sizable problems with survey research estimates
of the influence of political advertising that prompt doubt about the rosy conclusions
characterized by Martin. It examines survey estimates of ad exposure, in particular,
state-of-the-art measures using Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG) data,
which capture the frequency of all political ads in the top 75 media markets in the
United States1. Researchers using these measures claim that they have fewer
disadvantages of survey estimates of ad exposure while possessing several
advantages over experiments. I examine the nature of errors in self-reports of
television viewing habits, the foundation of the state-of-the-art measures, and
discuss their impact on the inferences that are drawn about the relationship between
exposure to advertising and political behavior via a two part multi-method research
design. The first part is a within-subjects experiment that allows comparison of
actual exposure to television with survey estimates of exposure. The experiment
permits a more direct assessment of the properties of survey measures of exposure
than alternatives, such as exploring their construct validity or ‘‘predictive power’’
(Ridout, Shah, Goldstein, & Franz 2004). In the second part of the study, I examine
American National Election Study (ANES) data in which respondents were asked
about their viewing habits in three different question formats to see whether the
variation in individuals’ estimates parallels the findings from the diaries. Finding
that it does, I then demonstrate that there are systematic individual-level character-
istics, such as political knowledge, that drive discrepancies in estimates of television
watching based on different question formats and that such sensitivity to question
wording has an important impact on estimates of the influence of political advertising.
To be sure, survey researchers are aware of the inevitability of measurement error
in estimating exposure to advertising. However, this paper shows that the error in
survey estimates may be both larger than assumed and, more importantly, correlated
with individual-level characteristics associated with key dependent variables such as
the propensity to vote and interest in the campaign. These systematic errors in
measurement undoubtedly bias estimates of the influence of ads. This affects

1
More recent CMAG data cover the top 100 media markets.

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observed relationships and the inferences thereby drawn. Fortunately I am able to

demonstrate also that one of the more theoretically defensible, though not always
used, measures of ad exposure can alleviate many of these problems.

Survey Measures of Ad Exposure

There are three main approaches to estimating exposure to advertising in surveys.

One does not attempt to measure individual exposure, instead examining the
association between aggregate level variation in negative advertising and survey
measures (Finkel & Geer, 1998; Lau & Pomper, 2001). A second approach relies on
some form of self-reported exposure to advertising (Wattenberg & Brians, 1999;
West, 1994). The problem with these measures, as Ansolabehere, Iyengar, and Simon
(1999) demonstrate, is endogeneity with key dependent variables. Individuals who
recall being exposed to advertising are also more likely to vote, for example.
The current state-of-the-art measure, employing CMAG data, avoids the
endogeneity problem because respondents are simply asked about their television
viewing habits. It also lacks the weaknesses of aggregate estimates of exposure or
measures derived from ads made rather than ads aired (Freedman & Goldstein,
1999; Ridout et al., 2004). CMAG data tell us where and when ads were aired in the
largest 75 television markets (covering roughly three-quarters of the United States
population). These data are then combined with reports of television viewing habits,
generally taken from American National Election Studies (ANES). If we know
when and how often an individual watches television, from the ANES data, and the
ads that were aired at that time, from the CMAG data, we can estimate the ads an
individual is likely to have seen by multiplying one by the other. For example, an
individual in Market A who watches television for three of the four hours between
4 pm and 8 pm (i.e., 75 percent of those hours), during which 100 political ads were
aired, would be estimated to have been exposed to 75 ads. An individual in Market
B with the same viewing habits but where 20 political ads were aired at that time
would be estimated to have been exposed to 15 ads.2 Using these individuals’
reported viewing habits from other times of day and weekends then allows us to
build a database of individual exposure to campaign advertising.
Resulting estimates are sensitive both to whether individuals were likely to be
watching television when ads were aired and to variation by television market. For
example, regardless of how many ads are aired, if an individual does not watch
television she will not have been exposed to any ads, and the estimate will be that
she was exposed to no advertising.3 Similarly, an avid television watcher in a

2
This calculation is based on self-reported viewing habits at particular times of day, or ‘‘dayparts.’’ As
discussed below, estimates of exposure using CMAG data have also based television viewing habits on
how often individuals claim to watch particular shows. Allthese methods, however, are based on the same
principle of multiplying self-reported viewing by ads aired (see Ridout et al., 2004).
3
Of course, she may still be indirectly affected by advertising: through media coverage, or if the
candidates’ ads become an issue of discussion in the campaign. However, that is beyond what can be
explored here and beyond the range of most work using CMAG data.

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market without competitive races may see less political advertising than an
infrequent television watcher in a market with competitive races. These estimates
thus greatly improve the main deficiency of survey measures of ad exposure, the
clear knowledge of exposure, while easily trumping experiments when it comes to
external validity.
Freedman and Goldstein (and their collaborators), in particular, have written
several carefully argued articles using CMAG data (Freedman, Franz, & Goldstein,
2004; Freedman & Goldstein, 1999; Freedman, Goldstein, & Granato, 2000;
Goldstein & Freedman, 2002a, 2002b; Ridout et al., 2004). Other authors interested
in questions of political advertising also now employ these data (e.g., Kahn &
Kenney, 2004; Martin, 2004). Importantly, Freedman and Goldstein acknowledge
possible weaknesses, pointing out that their estimates are probably the upper bound
of true exposure because individuals are unlikely to have seen or paid attention to
all the ads aired at a certain time. Overall, however, they argue that they should get
the relative volume of exposure among individuals about right.
To be sure, measurement error is endemic to almost all survey measures,
particularly those that rely on self-report and recall. There is an extensive literature
that documents exactly this, including reports of behavior with reference to
television (Chang & Krosnick, 2003; Price & Zaller, 1993; Tourangeau, Rips, &
Rasinski 2000). Chang and Krosnick, for example, show that answers about media
use in the ‘‘typical’’ week differ from answers pertaining to the ‘‘past’’ week, with
the former having greater predictive validity. Intriguingly, they also find that the
differences are largest among the most educated respondents. They theorize that for
these respondents small changes in question wording affect their memory search,
whereas less educated respondents are more likely to draw on the same information
regardless.
The motivation for this paper is that too little is known about the measurement
properties of the key variable of exposure used in estimates that combine CMAG
data and self-reported television viewing habits. The objective is different in critical
ways from Ridout et al.’s (2004) examination of CMAG based measures. They
compare the construct validity of estimates of exposure using CMAG data to other
methods of estimation and conclude that CMAG measures have greater validity
because they are more reliably tied to when and what individuals were exposed to.
However, Ridout et al. do not examine measurement error and they do not provide
the rationale discussed here for using logged measures of exposure. In other words,
this paper asks a more fundamental question about CMAG measures. Its purpose is
not to argue that CMAG data should not be used, but to urge more caution in using
appropriate measures of ad exposure.

Data

The data I use to examine these issues come from two sources: an experiment and
the 1998 ANES pilot survey, in which respondents were asked about their television
viewing habits. The experiment was conducted at a southern university in two
classes of undergraduates in the spring of 2004 and the spring of 2005. There were

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95 respondents in total, of whom 91 completed both stages of the experiment, the

stated purpose of which was to be used for discussion in a later class, where
participants were assured of their anonymity. In the first stage subjects were asked
to keep a diary of the television they watched over a four week period. The task was
not onerous; participants simply noted the times they watched television each day.
In the 2005 study, the diaries also included boxes for subjects to check each day if
they watched network news or any edition of the local news. Subjects received
credit for maintaining the diaries and were consistently reminded about them. Two
weeks after they handed in their diary the same students were given an ostensibly
unrelated survey that included survey questions about television viewing habits in
the different formats used by the ANES. Participants were then debriefed about the
true purpose of the two stages of research, in which none of the students indicated
they were aware of a connection between the two.
The object of the experiment was to examine the discrepancies between the
amount of television subjects typically watched, according to their diaries, and the
amount they claimed to watch when answering survey questions. The survey items
also allowed me to examine responses to three different ANES measures of
television viewing habits that have been combined with CMAG data to estimate ad
exposure in the studies cited earlier (see Appendix for question wording). The three
measures are:

The Daypart Method

The method divides the day into chunks or ‘‘dayparts’’ (Freedman & Goldstein,
1999) and asks, ‘‘Thinking about this past week, about how many hours did you
personally watch television on a typical weekday morning, from 6am to 10am?’’,
and about the other 20 hours of the day. Questions about weekend viewing are asked
separately.

The Shows Method

The second method asks respondents how often they watch particular programs
(e.g., from the ANES 2000 survey, ‘‘How many times in the last week have you
watched Jeopardy?’’) or types of programs, such as daytime soap operas, and
constructs a scale of the overall extent of television viewing (Freedman et al., 2000).
Sometimes the frequency of watching specific shows is first aggregated into the
frequency of watching shows in a particular genre, such as game shows, from which
the overall extent of television viewing is then calculated (Goldstein and Freedman
2002a). This method of calculating exposure from specific shows and types of
shows is most similar to Ridout et al.’s (2004) ‘‘genre-based measure.’’ To
illustrate, if an individual watches Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune almost every day,
daytime talk shows regularly, but almost never watches morning news, evening
news, or late evening news programs, she might be at .5 on a 1-point scale of
television viewing. If 1,000 ads aired in her market during the campaign she would
be estimated to have seen 500 of them. Another individual in the same market who
watched news programs more often but never watched game shows or talk shows,

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might be at .25 on the 1-point scale of television viewing and therefore be estimated
to have seen 250 ads.

The Ads within Shows Method

Rather than trying to build a scale of television watching and then multiplying it by
the total number of ads aired in a market, the ‘‘ads within shows’’ method is based
on the fact that candidates tend to concentrate their advertising during particular
programs such as news broadcasts. An avid news watcher, during which 294,376
ads were aired in the 2000 election, for example (Freedman et al., 2004), is likely to
see a larger number of ads than a regular viewer of Judge Judy, where 10,036 ads
were aired. The ‘‘ads within shows’’ measure is based on the ads that were aired
during particular programs and how often respondents claim to watch those shows.
As with the shows method these are a combination of specific programs such as
Judge Judy and types of programs such as daytime television talk shows. An
individual who watched news programs seven days a week but never watched Judge
Judy would be estimated to have seen 294,376 ads,4 whereas an individual who
watched Judge Judy every day but never watched the news would be estimated to
have seen 10,036 ads. According to Freedman et al. (2004), in 2000 roughly two-
thirds of all ads were aired during the shows about which the ANES asked.5 They
calculated likely exposure to the other third using The shows method (i.e.,
multiplying the total number of ads that were not aired during the specified shows
by a measure of mean television viewing).6
I compare the diaries with the daypart and shows methods. The comparison of
the diaries with the ads within shows method is less comprehensive because it is
limited to how often subjects claimed to watch national and local news rather than
all the shows the ANES asks about. Nevertheless, about 44 percent of ads are aired
during news programs, making the accuracy of reports of news watching more
consequential to ads within shows estimates than how accurately, for example, an
individual recalls how often he or she watches Jeopardy. Discrepancies between the
diary and survey measures of news watching thus have important implications for
the ads within shows method.
The second data source is the 1998 ANES pilot study. This survey took place in
three states: California, Georgia, and Illinois. All respondents were first asked how
many hours of television they watch on a typical weekday morning, afternoon and
evening. Later, a random half of the sample was also asked how many hours of
television they watched during five segments, or ‘‘dayparts,’’ of the past week; the

4
In fact, the calculation is slightly more complicated because the ads on news programs are the total
across the three networks. The estimate is therefore divided by three.
5
The shows were ‘‘Jeopardy’’, ‘‘Wheel of Fortune’’, ‘‘morning news programs such as ‘Today,’ ‘Good
Morning America,’ or ‘The Early Show’’’, ‘‘daytime television talk shows such as ‘Oprah Winfrey,’
‘Rosie O’Donnell,’ or ‘Jerry Springer’, network news programs in the late afternoon or early evening
such as ‘World News Tonight’ on ABC, ‘NBC Nightly News,’ ‘The CBS Evening News,’or some other
network news, and local TV news shows in the late afternoon or early-evening, such as ‘Eyewitness
News’ or ‘Action News.’
6
The ads within shows method is similar to Ridout et al’s (2004)‘‘five program measure.’’

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other random half of the sample, on the other hand, was asked how often in the last
week they had watched particular ‘‘shows’’ such as The Today Show and Wheel of
Fortune. Comparing responses to these different question formats permits an
analysis of discrepancies in reported television viewing that can then be judged
against the patterns of discrepancies from the diary study; they turn out to be
similar. In addition, the larger sample size of the ANES study, along with the greater
variation in respondents’ political knowledge, allows me to examine the factors
associated with larger discrepancies in recall. Finding that political knowledge is a
major influence, I am able to show how its moderating impact on the relationship
between ad exposure and political behavior varies purely as an artifact of different
methods of assessing exposure.
Before turning to the analysis, the assumption in the experiment that the diaries
gauge actual exposure needs to be addressed (additional concerns about the validity
of the diaries are discussed in the Appendix). The advantage of time-diaries over
surveys is the greater internal validity of a more idiographic approach where
subjects record their behavior in real time. Responses to survey questions that ask
about time spent on various activities are systematically affected by factors such as
aspects of an individual’s lifestyle and personal characteristics that affect recall. In a
nutshell, time-diaries are, ‘‘less dependent on respondents’ calculation and
augmentation of the time they spend on various activities’’ (Kan & Gershiny,
2006). As a result, time-diaries appear to provide reliable, valid, and generalizable
measures of behavior (Robinson & Godbey, 1997, 77). In my study, I also used
methods suggested by the time-diary literature to enhance accuracy, such as the
consistent reminders subjects in the classes received.
My claim is not that the diaries were perfectly accurate records of the television
all subjects watched, nor that the television habits of students are representative of
the entire population; it is simply that great effort was made to provide incentives to
make the diaries as accurate as possible. Empirical examination and the testimony
of some of the subjects themselves suggest it succeeded (see Appendix). In addition,
the fact that the kinds of discrepancies in self-reported viewing habits between the
diaries and survey data of the students are echoed with the ANES data for a mass
sample of adults strengthens the external validity of the findings.

Analysis

The diary study indicated that subjects watched an average of 10.4 h of television a
week. Figure 1 shows the total number of hours subjects watched each week, as
recorded in the diaries. Respondents are ordered by the average number of hours of
television watched over these four weeks, from fewest to most hours (i.e., the x-axis
represents Respondent 1 (who watched the fewest average hours), Respondent 2
(who watched the next fewest) through Respondent 91 (who watched the most
average hours)), the solid black line in Fig. 1. The amount of television they
watched each week, represented by the other four lines, showed some variation
around a central tendency: correlations between weeks range from .74 to .83, with

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40
Week 1
Week 2
35 Week 3
Week 4
Overall Average

30

25
Hours watched per wee

20

15

10

0
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58 61 64 67 70 73 76 79 82 85 88 91

Fig. 1 Hours of television watched from diaries. Data from: Student diaries and surveys

slightly stronger correlations between adjacent weeks. Thus, from all appearances
the average over the four weeks was a valid measure of a typical week’s viewing.
Figure 2 compares the average number of hours watched according to the diaries
with subjects’ estimates of how much television they watch using the ANES daypart
question format (the x-axis represents respondents and the order is the same as in
Fig. 1).7 The fact that subjects had kept diaries for four weeks only two weeks prior
to the survey should mean that, if anything, awareness of television viewing habits
was heightened. Figure 2 makes it clear that subjects vastly overestimated how
much television they watch each week. The average amount of television watched
by these respondents according to the survey estimates was 27.9 h rather than 10.4.
Because the daypart questions ask about the ‘‘past week’’ I cannot be certain that
everyone in the sample did not watch much more television than usual, but it seems
a remote possibility and the timing of the study aimed to avoid periods during which
viewing habits were likely to change. Only three respondents estimated that they
watched fewer hours of television than their diaries suggested. If one treats the
average number of hours watched per week from the diaries as the ‘‘true score,’’ the
reliability of the daypart questions as measures of television viewing—the variance
of the true score divided by the variance of the measure—is only .18.
What explains these discrepancies? Chang and Krosnick (2003) argue that such
overestimates of typical behavior are routine. It looks here as though when asked the

7
The daypart questions were phrased identically to the ANES 1998 pilot (see Appendix). In 2000 the
ANES asked questions about specific programs. In 2002 and 2004 the ANES asked only about news
programs. For the questions about programs, I used the phrasing of the 2000 ANES.

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80

Average from diary

Daypart estimate
70

60
A v er ag e Ho u r s Wat c h ed

50

40

30

20

10

0
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58 61 64 67 70 73 76 79 82 85 88 91

Fig. 2 Average hours of television watched according to diaries and daypart questions. Data from:
Student diaries and surveys

daypart questions subjects think of the number of hours of television they are ever
likely to watch at certain times rather than the hours they typically watch or are likely
to have watched in the past week. Alternatively, Allen (1965) showed that about 40
percent of the time during which the television was switched on either no one was
watching (i.e., there was no audience), or the audience was inattentive. Perhaps the
daypart questions better capture times during which the television is on than when a
respondent is actually watching. The discrepancies are also in keeping with Robinson
and Godbey’s (1997) finding that relative to time diary data individuals are prone to
overestimate the amount of time engaged in household work in a typical week.
However, their comparison was with diaries of the past 24 hours’ activity, whereas
the comparison here is with behavior over a four week period.
My experiment suggests that estimates of exposure to advertising based on
daypart questions are likely to be much too high and that this is not, as generally
claimed, an ‘‘upper bound’’ because of the assumption that individuals were
viewing and paying attention to ads at the times they were watching television; it is,
rather, an overestimate because the other part of the equation—the estimation of
hours watched—is inflated. Nevertheless, the argument has been that the relative
frequency of viewing captured by survey questions such as in the ANES is about
right, so perhaps this does not matter. Indeed, the correlations between the diaries
and the self-reports of television watching from daypart questions were .64
(Pearson’s) and .62 (Spearman’s). Table 1 presents Pearson’s correlations for the
daypart and other two methods of estimating exposure discussed above. There were

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reasonably strong correlations between the diaries and the daypart questions—the
daypart questions captured about half the variance in average television watching
from the diaries—but they were not overwhelming. Even given typical levels of
measurement error, if one accepts the accuracy of the diaries there was genuine
error in the relative amounts of television watching elicited by the daypart
questions.
The second method, based on total shows, does not look as valid. The correlation
between this index and the average number of hours of television watched per week
from the diaries was only .33. The correlation between typical television viewing
according to the survey questions and the index of total shows was slightly higher at
.38—there is a relationship—but if one imagines multiplying this index by CMAG
data (e.g., Freedman et al., 2000) and using the product to estimate what are
generally thought to be small influences of advertising it is no wonder that there are
conflicting findings in the literature. It could be argued that the low correlations are
because students are less likely to be viewers of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, but
then one could counterargue that they are more likely to be viewers of talk shows;
indeed the premise of these questions is that the balance of shows captures overall
viewing habits at all ages.
On the other hand, correlations between local and national news viewing in the
diaries—so crucial to the ads within shows method—and from the answers given in
the surveys were at the higher level of the daypart questions, .69 and .61. It should
be remembered though that even if 44 percent of ads are aired during the news
(Freedman et al., 2004), 56 percent are not, and one-third of the ads in 2000 were
aired during programs the ANES did not ask about. Exposure to those ads is
estimated from the total shows method. The diaries suggest that this will reduce the
correlation between these estimates and true television watching, particularly for
individuals who watch a lot of television other than the shows asked about.
Perhaps we can afford to be sanguine; after all, it could be argued, the
measurement error in survey measures of exposure to advertising may be greater
than acknowledged but it is just random error in an independent variable. In the
bivariate case, this implies that the estimated slope of the impact of exposure to
advertising will be attenuated, particularly if the reliability is as low as .18, and we
are never as concerned by error that makes our estimates more conservative. The
multivariate case is more complicated, however: ‘‘In the most general case
[however] all one knows is that estimated regression coefficients will be biased
when measurement error is present. The direction and magnitude of the error is
usually unpredictable’’ (Berry & Feldman, 1985, 30). In other words, in

Table 1 Correlations between

Overall diary average
average television watching in
per week
diaries and from ANES
questions in student surveys
Daypart method .64
(n = 91)
Total shows method .33
Local news .69
Data from: Student diaries and National news .61
surveys

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multivariate models of the type routinely used in the political advertising literature,
any kind of measurement error may present a problem. Nonrandom error is
particularly problematic, however, and the ANES pilot data will suggest that the
error in self-reported television viewing habits may indeed be nonrandom.
To recap, in the ANES 1998 pilot respondents were first asked how many hours
of television they watched on a typical weekday morning and afternoon, on a typical
weekday evening, and on a typical weekend morning and afternoon. Later in the
same survey half the sample were asked how many hours of television they watched
during five weekday dayparts and between 6 am and 7 pm at the weekend during the
past week. Another half of the sample was asked about specific shows. The
estimates of weekly television viewing that result from the ANES 1998 pilot study
echo those from the diary study. First, the daypart questions yield higher estimates
than the typical weekday and weekend questions; almost three-quarters of the
sample claimed to watch more television when the questions were asked in daypart
form. The 1998 ANES pilot, like the diary study, suggests that daypart questions
lead to higher estimates of television viewing and thus of exposure to advertising.
Second, the correlation between the measures is, however, reasonably high at .67.
And third, the estimate using the total shows method has a weaker correlation with
the typical weekday and weekend questions of .47.8
While this evidence reinforces the experimental results, the ANES pilot data
provide an additional opportunity to examine the individual-level correlates with
discrepancies in reported television watching. I created a dependent variable of the
discrepancy, in hours, by subtracting implied weekly hours of television viewing
from the daypart question format from the implied weekly hours of television
viewing in response to the typical weekday and weekend questions. Table 2 shows
the results of regressing this discrepancy variable on key respondent characteristics
from the advertising and voting behavior literature: strength of party identification
(from 0, Independent, to 3, strong identifier), internal and external efficacy (1 to 5
scales where 5 represents the strongest sense of efficacy), political knowledge (a 0
to 4 scale based on factual questions), mobilization by a party or candidate (a 0 to 3
scale based on types of contact), sex (female = 1), and age.
I also look in more detail at the properties of the daypart measure by including it
as a control variable. It may be that the discrepancies between the daypart and
typical weekday and weekend measures are constant (e.g., a respondent who
estimates 10 h given the latter format says 20 with the former, a respondent who
estimates 40 h given the latter format says 50 with the former, and so on), in which
case the coefficient on the variable will not be statistically different from zero. It is
also possible, however, that individuals who watch the least television according to
the typical daypart measures have the largest discrepancies because they watch
much less according to the typical day measures (the coefficient would be negative),

8
This echoes the diary study (i.e., the shows method has the lowest correlation) but I cannot calculate the
correlation with the daypart questions because of the daypart and shows questions being asked of different
halves of the sample.

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Table 2 Regression of discrepancies between ANES questions on individual level characteristics

Variable Coefficient (standard error)

Total daypart estimate .45 (.03)**

Political knowledge .96 (.47)*
Mobilized by a party/candidate 1.66 (.68)*
Strength of party identification .47 (.61)
Internal efficacy .21 (.57)
External efficacy .39 (.44)
Age .05 (.04)
Sex .83 (1.18)
Constant 10.91 (2.85)**
N 555
Adjusted R2 .35

** p < .01, * p < .05, # p < .10 (two-tailed)

Data from: ANES 1998 pilot study

or that the largest discrepancies are characteristic of those who watch the most
television according to the daypart questions (the coefficient would be positive).9
Table 2 illustrates that several individual characteristics are associated with
greater sensitivity to question format; that is with larger discrepancies in estimated
television watching. In addition, the positive and statistically significant coefficient
on the daypart estimate shows that the discrepancies with the ‘‘typical day’’
questions are not constant but grow larger as the daypart estimates grow larger. It is
the relationships with political knowledge and mobilization by a party or candidate
that are most interesting, however. Politically knowledgeable individuals and those
subject to the most intense mobilization efforts, who we also know are likely to have
the greatest resources of time and money and to be politically engaged, are the most
sensitive to question format (i.e., the discrepancies in their answers tend to be
greatest). This echoes Chang and Krosnick’s (2003) finding for highly educated
respondents and the explanation may well be similar: differences in question
wording prompt different memory searches for these individuals but do not for those
who lack political knowledge or are disengaged.10
9
I excluded 12 respondents who, in answer to the typical weekday day, evening, or weekend questions,
said they watched more than 10 h a day because they were all coded as an ‘11’ in the ANES survey rather
than by the exact number of hours. Because the hours they watch may exceed 11, the discrepancy with the
daypart questions could be exaggerated. This is not a conventional case of censoring for which tobit
estimation would be appropriate. The censoring affects a component of a dependent variable
(discrepancy), stopping us from knowing whether the two methods of self-report offer very similar
answers for these 12 respondents, rather than there being censoring of the dependent variable itself at its
upper or lower levels.
10
Indeed, replacing political knowledge with level of education in Table 2 shows the same robust,
positive relationship. With the inclusion of both political knowledge and education in the same model,
however, the coefficients for each are reduced and political knowledge drifts to statistical insignificance;
they share variance because educated individuals tend to be more politically informed. They each indicate
that political sophistication is associated with sensitivity to question wording. In the remainder of the
paper I continue to focus on political knowledge because it is the more common indicator of political
sophistication in this literature (e.g., Freedman et al., 2004; Kahn & Kenney, 1999)

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Polit Behav

More importantly, however, these nonrandom discrepancies are greatest among

precisely those individuals most interested in campaigns, most likely to vote, and so
on. The daypart questions inflate estimates of television watching generally, but
because discrepancies with other measures are systematically more pronounced
among these individuals the relationships between, for example, political knowl-
edge, exposure to negative advertising, and attitudes and behavior will be sensitive
to the questions used to construct the exposure estimates, varying in sign and size
(Berry and Feldman 1985). As implied by this evidence, the literature using CMAG
data has been inconsistent, suggesting both that the least politically knowledgeable
are unaffected or confused by exposure to (negative) advertising (Stevens, 2005)
and that they benefit the most from exposure to advertising (Freedman et al., 2004).
In either case the normative implications are profound, either implying that, all else
equal, the modern campaign exacerbates cynicism and inequality in political
participation or that campaign ads ‘‘represent the multivitamins of American
politics’’ (Freedman et al., 2004, 725).
The 1998 ANES pilot data allow a more explicit analysis of how question
formats may contribute to the confusion. I estimated identical models of the
relationship between exposure to negative advertising, political knowledge and four
dependent variables typical of the literature: engagement with the campaign
(frequency of discussing politics during the past week and awareness of the issues
the candidates for governor had been discussing during the campaign), views of
government (external efficacy), and the probability of voting (see Appendix for
details).11 One set of models operationalized total exposure to negative advertising
using the daypart method, another calculated total exposure from the ‘‘typical day’’
questions, while a third constructed total exposure using the shows method. In
addition I controlled for standard variables in the literature (e.g., Freedman et al.,
2004): the total amount of negative advertising in the respondent’s market—a
measure of how intense the campaign was in that locale12—dummy variables for
two of the three states (Georgia and Illinois), strength of party identification, the
extent of mobilization from the parties, education, race, age, and income. The key
variables of interest are exposure to negative advertising and the interaction between
exposure to negative advertising and political knowledge. Table 3 presents the

11
The CMAG data for 1998 do not include information about gubernatorial advertising. However,
Stevens (2005) argues that because both the gubernatorial and Senate elections in California, Georgia,
and Illinois shared similar characteristics, such as competitiveness, and because candidates tend to air ads
at the same time it is a reasonable assumption that exposure to advertising in the gubernatorial race was
highly correlated with exposure to the Senate race. In Tables 3 and 4 I include one dependent variable that
is specific to the gubernatorial races in these states, the number of issues that respondents recognize the
candidates have talked about: if exposure to negative advertising increases awareness of issues and
individuals who saw a lot of Senate ads also saw a lot of gubernatorial ads we would expect exposure to
negative advertising to have a positive relationship with recognition of issues.
12
Total negative advertising in a television market is arguably a better measure of campaign intensity
than total advertising because we tend to see more advertising, and more negative advertising, in
competitive races. I also estimated all the models in Tables 3 and 4 with total advertising as a proxy for
campaign intensity. It made no difference to the results.

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 Table 3 The impact of exposure to negative advertising and political knowledge using different methods of estimating exposure
Independent variable Dependent variable

123
# days in past week talked about # issues recognize that candidates External efficacy Intention to vote
politics have talked about

Daypart Typical day Daypart Typical day Daypart Typical day Daypart Typical day

Political knowledge .359 (.137)* .354 (.125)** .270 (.178)# .106 (.162) .171 (.088)# .092 (.079) .200 (.055)** .140 (.050)**
Exposure to negative .0003 (.0014) .0043 (.0019)* .0015 (.0009)# .0011 (.0006)#
advertising
(daypart method)
Exposure to negative .0011 (.0005)* .0006 (.0006) .0005 (.0003)# .0003 (.0002)#
advertising
(daypart method) ·
Political
knowledge
Exposure to negative .0004 (.0014) .0014 (.0016) .0004(.0008) .0004(.0005)
advertising (typical
day)
Exposure to negative .0010 (.0004)** .0003 (.0005) . .0000 (.0002) .0001 (.0001)
advertising (typical
day) · Political
knowledge
Mobilized by parties .659 (.146)** .655 (.147)** .708 (.193)** .713 (.194)** .073 (.095) .081 (.095) .212 (.059)** .218 (.060)**
Strength of party .229 (.128)# .230 (.128)# .240 (.161)# .253 (.162)# .266 (.079)** .266 (.079)** .234 (.050)** .232 (.051)**
identification
Total negative spots .0004 (.0003) .0004 (.0003) .0004 (.0005) .0002 (.0005) .0001 (.0002) .0003 (.0002)# .0002 (.0001)# .0001 (.0001)
in market
Georgia .246 (.324) .253 (.324) .389 (.417) .413 (.420) .134 (.205) .133 (.206) .194 (.129)# .193 (.129)#
Illinois .498 (.373) .489 (.375) .842 (.477)# .849 (.491)# .004 (.234) .018 (.236) .171 (.147) .149 (.148)
Polit Behav
 Table 3 continued
Independent Dependent variable
variable
Polit Behav

# days in past week talked about # issues recognize that candidates External efficacy Intention to vote
politics have talked about

Daypart Typical day Daypart Typical day Daypart Typical day Daypart Typical day

Education .120 (.245) .119 (.245) .266 (.303) .285 (.305) .302 (.149)* .291 (.150)# .052 (.094) .061 (.094)
African- .045 (.391) .046 (.391) .320 (.502) .273 (.505) .241 (.248) .219 (.249) .233 (.158)# .247 (.159)#
American
Income .013(.149) .008(.150) .090 (.188) .096 (.191) .151 (.093)# .139 (.095)# .064 (.058) .052 (.049)
Age .024 (.009)** .024 (.009)** .003 (.011) .003 (.011) .007(.005) .007(.005) .007 (.003)* .007 (.003)*
Constant .237 (.668) .251 (.642) 4.162 (.789)** 4.573 (.772)** 1.368 (.391)** 1.592 (.381)** .946 (.247)** 1.121 (.241)**
N 320 320 377 377 373 373 372 372
Adjusted R2 .15 .15 .07 .06 .08 .07 .18 .18

** p < .01, * p < .05, # p < .15 (two-tailed test)

Data from: ANES 1998 pilot study

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 Polit Behav

results using the daypart and typical day questions side by side13 (estimates using
the shows method are available on request).
Focusing first on the relationships from estimates based on the daypart method
we see some influence of exposure to negative advertising in all four models, and
interaction coefficients between exposure to negative advertising and political
knowledge that are statistically significant, or close to it at conventional levels, in
three of the four models. In each of these models the sign on the main effect is
positive while the interaction term is negative. The implication, echoing recent
CMAG-based findings (Freedman et al., 2004) is that it is the least politically
sophisticated who derive the greatest benefit from exposure to negative advertising.
The daypart estimates in Table 3 suggest that as a result of exposure to negative
advertising, relative to political sophisticates, the least politically sophisticated
become more likely to talk about politics, have an enhanced sense of governmental
responsiveness to its citizens, and are more certain that they will vote. The estimates
using the typical day measures of television viewing in Table 3 are, however, quite
different in implication. While the result is the same for the relationship between
exposure to negative advertising and discussion of politics, the other relationships
are overwhelmingly insignificant, suggesting neither an influence of exposure to
negative advertising nor any moderating impact of political knowledge. In addition,
estimates using the shows method indicate no influence of exposure to negative
advertising on any of the dependent variables.
It therefore appears as though the relationships, and the conclusions one would
draw about the impact of advertising and the moderating influence of political
knowledge on the relationship between exposure to negative advertising and
campaign learning, attitudes toward government, and voting behavior are highly
sensitive to question wording. Perhaps it is not a startling claim that different
operationalizations of independent variables produce different results. However,
other literatures are more settled both theoretically and empirically. There is
relatively little controversy about what party identification or trust in government is,
or how to measure them, nor about key variables such as vote choice or turnout in
the area of voting behavior. The field of political advertising is not so fortunate;
there is not a settled approach to the operationalization of exposure in survey
research.
So how should survey researchers deal with the measurement problems I have
outlined? As always, one should begin with theory. Fortunately the theoretically
most defensible specification of exposure also alleviates some of these problems of
sensitivity to question wording. In Table 3 I adopted the approach of some research
in the field (e.g., Goldstein & Freedman, 2002a) by specifying a relationship in
which the marginal effects of exposure to advertising are constant; the impact of
exposure to the first ad is assumed to be the same as the impact of exposure to the
one hundred and first. This seems unrealistic, however. Much of the qualitative
13
The relatively small sample sizes in Table 3, for an ANES survey, are because, first, the daypart
questions were asked of a half sample and, second CMAG data cover only the top 75 television markets,
containing about three-quarters of the U.S. population, meaning there is no information about advertising
where many of the respondents lived (which is why there are roughly one-third fewer respondents in
Table 3 than in Table 2).

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Polit Behav

evidence about negative advertising indicates a growing weariness and weakened

impact with increased exposure (e.g., Patterson & McClure, 1976, 150). More
importantly from a theoretical perspective, a wealth of psychological research on
message repetition (Cacioppo & Petty, 1989) and primacy effects (Holbrook,
Krosnick, Visser, Gardner, & Cacioppo, 2001) indicates that the impact of
communications is non linear; it tends to decline over time.14
There are two principal ways of operationalizing nonlinear relationships. The
first is to add a quadratic term that allows not only for a decline in the marginal
effects of exposure but also for their possible reversal. However, one would not
expect the reversal of marginal effects across the entire range of commonly
analyzed dependent variables. With levels of information, for example, declining
marginal effects seem likely but a reversal of marginal effects—the notion that
individuals start to lose information at higher levels of exposure—does not.
Moreover, the empirical evidence for such a reversal is weak; it only appears at
levels of negativity higher than those actually observed (Lau & Pomper, 2001).
The most theoretically defensible operationalization of exposure is the second,
taking the log of the estimate, which accounts for diminishing marginal effects of
exposure. Some research has done this (Freedman et al., 2004; Freedman and
Goldstein 1999; Ridout et al. 2004) but what is new in this paper is the argument
that this operationalization may also have a payoff in measurement terms. The
reason is because, first, taking the log of estimated exposure compresses much of the
variation that is an artifact of question wording and, second, overestimates of
exposure that are a consequence of overestimates of television viewing in the
daypart format in particular are rendered less consequential. Taking the log of the
daypart and typical day questions increases the correlation between the two
measures to .96; to all intents and purposes the variation is the same, while the
correlation between estimates using the typical day and shows questions is .90, not
as strong as Ridout et al. (2004) find but stronger than the correlations between the
‘‘raw’’ estimates of exposure.15
Table 4 shows the model results using the daypart, typical day, and show based
operationalizations. Two aspects are noteworthy: there is greater consistency in the
estimates across the different methods, with one important exception, and the results
of the models using the more realistic logged measures of exposure are somewhat
different than those assuming a linear impact of exposure. They suggest a more
limited influence of exposure, with no impact on perceptions of external efficacy or
likelihood to vote, and few differences that are a result of political knowledge; they
are confined to the frequency of discussing the campaign.
But there is still some inconsistency. The signs on the coefficients for the daypart
and typical day questions indicate that exposure to negative advertising stimulates

14
On-line models of attitude formation and updating also imply that the capacity of new information to
alter impressions diminishes.
15
Using the log of their estimates is likely the reason why Ridout et al. (2004) find high correlations
between their three estimates of exposure using CMAG data. It is not, as they imply, because daypart and
show methods provide essentially the same information about television viewing habits but because the
correlations are between logged estimates of exposure, meaning the variation due to discrepancies has
been reduced.

123
 Table 4 The impact of exposure to negative advertising and political knowledge using logged measures of exposure
Independent variable Dependent variable

123
# days in past week talked about politics # issues recognize that candidates have talked about

Daypart Typical day Shows Daypart Typical day Shows

Political Knowledge .526 (.196)** .499 (.193)** .112 (.150) .268 (.247) .148 (.243) .263 (.202)
Logged exposure to negative advertising (daypart method) .206 (.139)# .314 (.170)#
Logged exposure to negative advertising (daypart .089 (.041)* .027 (.051)
method) ·
Political knowledge
Logged exposure to negative advertising (typical day) .246 (.146)# .223 (.179)
Logged exposure to negative advertising (typical day) · .089 (.043)* .006 (.054)
Political knowledge
Logged exposure to negative advertising (shows) .094 (.115) .284 (.147)#
Logged exposure to negative advertising (shows) · .064 (.035)# .034(.046)
Political knowledge
Mobilized by parties .640 (.147)** .635 (.148)** .388 (.145)** .722 (.193)** .717 (.193)** 1.149 (.194)**
Strength of party identification .226 (.130)# .239 (.129)# .116 (.120) .245 (.162)# .248 (.161)# .222 (.165)
Total negative spots in market .0000 (.0004) .0001 (.0004) .0004 (.0003) .0004 (.0005) .0004 (.0005) .0004 (.0004)
Georgia .183 (.332) .205 (.335) .433 (.341) .583 (.427) .602 (.430) 1.013 (.466)*
Illinois .468 (.379) .485 (.377) .191 (.383) 1.010 (.485)* .969 (.482)* 1.516 (.519)**
Education .203 (.245) .206 (.245) .278 (.213) .290 (.302) .299 (.302) .430 (.272)#
African-American .204 (.389) .215 (.389) .340 (.333) .219 (.497) .206 (.497) .532 (.427)
Income .024 (.151) .009 (.152) .018 (.138) .090 (.188) .103 (.189) .489 (.190)*
Age .024 (.009)** .023 (.009)** .012 (.008) .004 (.011) .004 (.011) .007 (.011)
Constant .270 (.787) .291 (.780) 1.985 (.637)** 3.787 (.920)** 4.173 (.918)** 3.133 (.804)**
N 320 320 340 377 377 416
Polit Behav

Adjusted R2 .14 .13 .08 .07 .07 .14

 Table 4 continued
Polit Behav

Independent variable Dependent variable

# days in past week talked about politics # issues recognize that candidates have talked about

Daypart Typical day Shows Daypart Typical day Shows

Political knowledge .036 (.123) .038 (.120) .131 (.097) .184 (.077)* .150 (.075)* .128 (.060)*
Logged exposure to .055 (.083) .038 (.053)
negative advertising (daypart method)
Logged exposure to negative .012 (.025) .009 (.016)
advertising (daypart method) ·
Political knowledge
Logged exposure to .106 (.087) .016 (.056)
negative advertising (typical day)
Logged exposure to negative . .013 (.027) .000 (.017)
advertising (typical day) ·
Political knowledge
Logged exposure to negative .021 (.071) .013 (.044)
advertising (shows)
Logged exposure to negative .008 (.022) .006 (.014)
advertising (shows) ·
Political knowledge
Mobilized by parties .076 (.095) .081 (.095) .187 (.093)* .215 (.060)** .217 (.060)** .313 (.058)**
Strength of party identification .271 (.079)** .268 (.079)** .111 (.080) .234 (.051)** .233 (.051)** .159 (.049)**
Total negative spots in market .0003 (.0002) .0004 (.0002)# .0000 (.0002) .0002 (.0001) .0001 (.0001) .0002 (.0001)#
Georgia .122 (.210) .080 (.211) .321 (.224) .180 (.132) .204 (.133)# .133 (.140)
Illinois .006 (.238) .008 (.236) .115 (.249) .156 (.150) .168 (.149) .172 (.156)

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 Table 4 continued
Education .299 (.149)* .293 (.148)* .010 (.131) .056 (.094) .062 (.094) .134 (.082)#
African-American .238 (.246) .233 (.245) .103 (.205) .243 (.157)# .248 (.157)# .143 (.127)

123
Income .145 (.094)# .134 (.094) .000 (.092) .061 (.059) .057 (.059) .139 (.057)*
Age .007 (.005) .007 (.005) .007 (.005) .007 (.003)* .007 (.003)* .009 (.003)**
Constant 1.757 (.457)** 1.830 (.455)** 2.848 (.388)** .965 (.289)** 1.111 (.288)** .934 (.244)**
N 373 373 415 372 372 412
Adjusted R2 .07 .08 .02 .18 .17 .21
** p < .01, * p < .05, # p < .15 (two-tailed test)
Data from: ANES 1998 pilot study
Polit Behav
Polit Behav

discussion of the campaign (the first column of results in Table 4); while the
negative interaction with political knowledge implies that the effects are strongest
on those with the least political knowledge. Simulations based on these estimates (in
which all control variables were set at their mean or mode, while knowledge was
allowed to vary from its lowest to its highest value and exposure to negative
advertising from one standard deviation below to one standard deviation above its
mean) suggest that more exposure to negative advertising increases frequency of
discussion of the campaign from about two days a week to three days a week among
those lowest in political knowledge. The highly politically knowledgeable,
meanwhile, are unaffected, and continue to discuss the campaign roughly three
days a week regardless of exposure to negative advertising.16 In other words, the
implication would be that exposure to negative advertising benefits those who know
the least about politics by making them more like those who know the most by
discussing the campaign more frequently.
However, the shows based estimates of exposure imply that negative advertising
hinders discussion of the campaign, especially among the least politically
knowledgeable, not only the reverse relationship but one with entirely different
normative implications. Instead of exposure to negative advertising reducing the
differences in frequency of discussion, similar simulations suggest that it
exacerbates them. According to simulations from this model, at high levels of
exposure those lowest in political knowledge discuss the campaign an average of
one and a half days a week compared to slightly over three days for the most
politically knowledgeable (i.e., low sophisticates behave less and less like high
sophisticates when exposed to more negative advertising).

Discussion and Conclusion

The impact of exposure to political advertising has aroused great interest in

academia and beyond; that interest has only increased as advertising campaigns
grow more negative (Geer, 2006). Researchers using survey estimates of ad
exposure that draw on CMAG data have presented a rosy image of advertising
effects. Exposure to advertising, they argue, especially negative advertising,
informs, stimulates, and ultimately enhances political participation. They suggest
that less politically sophisticated voters may even benefit the most from exposure,
gaining information, growing more interested in the campaign, and voting in larger
numbers. My findings indicate that we should be far less sanguine about advertising
effects because the measures of ad exposure on which these conclusions are based
contain error that is both large and nonrandom.
I have demonstrated that while CMAG data offer a remarkably comprehensive
picture of the ads that were aired in major television markets in the United States,
the estimates of individual ad exposure derived from these data depend on self-
reports of television viewing that are riddled with measurement problems.

16
The conditional effects of exposure for high sophisticates, the combination of main effect and
interaction, are statistically insignificant.

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 Polit Behav

An experiment in which students kept diaries of the television programming they

watched and later answered standard ANES survey questions about their television
viewing habits revealed not only a pervasive tendency to overestimate in survey
responses the time spent watching television but also large discrepancies in
estimates of television watching among different survey methods. I then showed a
similar pattern of differences in a large random sample of adults, among estimates
of television viewing of the kind commonly used in survey research incorporating
CMAG data (the 1998 ANES pilot survey, which asked about television viewing
habits with three different question wordings). These discrepancies are not random;
indicators of political sophistication, such as political knowledge, are systematically
associated with larger discrepancies. As a result, estimates of the relationship
between exposure to ads, political sophistication, and political behavior are unstable
and hinge on the questions used to gauge television viewing habits.
I have also offered two potential, partial solutions. First, by taking the log of
estimated exposure (which has the two advantages of accounting for the decreasing
marginal effects of additional exposure to advertising and, by ‘‘compressing’’
estimated exposure, reducing the inflated estimates of exposure that appear endemic
to these questions) we can diminish those differences in results that are artifacts
primarily of question wording. This approach will not eliminate the problem,
however. Even using logged estimates, I have shown that researchers can draw
sharply contrasting normative inferences from how exposure to negative advertising
influences the propensity to talk about politics. My analysis could be used to support
one picture in which exposure to negative ads makes low political sophisticates
behave like high political sophisticates but also the opposite view in which exposure
to negative ads exacerbates the differences between low and high political
sophisticates. In either case, the interpretation is purely an artifact of the questions
used to gauge television viewing habits. A second potential solution uses multiple
measures to gauge ad exposure. Bartels (1996, 2), who is often cited in support of the
‘‘shows’’ method of gauging viewing habits, is similarly circumspect about using a
single set of measures; he suggests that we should weigh the net benefit of investing
‘‘entirely in specific exposure items’’ against the advantages of using ‘‘some
combination of specific exposure items, general exposure items, and quiz items.’’
The implications for research on the impact of advertising are profound. The
mixture of findings in experiments and surveys may be the result of much more than
basic differences in research design. Survey estimates of the effects of ad exposure
are themselves highly unstable. Any attempt to estimate exposure to television
should be wary of individual sensitivity to even the most subtle changes in question
wording that can have vast effects on inferences. It is no wonder that carefully
conducted studies offer the conflicting interpretations that negative advertising is a
boon or a burden to American democracy. Perhaps a combination of approaches, in
which we return to multiple measures of ad exposure in order to be more certain of
the stability of relationships, while also evaluating effects based on a single common
operationalization of exposure, such as logged estimates, will point the way forward.

Acknowledgements Thanks to Barbara Allen, Andrew Seligsohn, and the editors for helpful comments
and suggestions.

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Polit Behav

Appendix

Coding of Variables

Daypart Questions. Question Wording: Thinking about this past week, about how
many hours did you personally watch television on a typical weekday morning/
afternoon, from [6:00 to 10:00 AM/ 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM/4:00 PM to 8:00 PM/
8:00 PM to 11:00 PM/11:00 PM to 1:00 AM]. Thinking about this past weekend,
about how many hours did you personally watch television from 6:00 AM to
7:00 PM? Coding: The total number of weekday hours (multiplied by 5) were
combined with the total number of weekend hours to estimate the total number of
hours of TV watched per week.
Typical Week Questions (from ANES 1998 Pilot). Question Wording: On a
typical weekday, about how many hours of television do you watch during the
morning and afternoon? About how many hours of television do you watch on a
typical weekday evening? On a typical weekend day, about how many hours of
television do you watch during the morning and afternoon? Coding: The total
number of weekday hours (multiplied by 5) were combined with the total number of
weekend day hours (multiplied by 2).
Show Questions (ANES 1998 Pilot). Question Wording: How many days/times
in the past week have you watched [The Today Show/The Rosie O’Donnell Show/
daytime soap operas like General Hospital or Days of Our Lives/Jeopardy or Wheel
of Fortune/a sports event/local news]? Coding: The sum of all six genres (each
genre was rescaled from zero to one) divided by six.
Show Questions (Experiment). Question Wording: How many times in a typical
week do you watch [Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune/morning news programs such as
Today, Good Morning America, or The Early Show/daytime television shows such
as Oprah Winfrey or Jerry Springer/national network on news/local TV news shows,
either in the late afternoon or early evening]?.
Efficacy. Question Wording: Please tell me how much you agree or disagree with
these statements ... agree strongly, agree somewhat, neither agree nor disagree,
disagree somewhat, disagree strongly, don’t know? Public officials don’t care what
people like me think; Sometimes politics seems so complicated that a person like
me can’t really understand what’s going on; People like me don’t have any say
about what the government does. Coding: The average response on the 1 to 5 scale.
Number of Days in the Past Week Talked About Politics. Question Wording:
How many days in the past week did you talk about politics with family or friends?
Number of Issues Recognize that Candidates Have Talked About. Question
Wording: For each issue we would like to know if you think either one of the
candidates, both, or neither is talking about these issues (private school vouchers,
abortion, gun-related crimes, campaign contributions from PACs, protecting the
quality of the air and water, improving discipline in schools). Coding: Total of
number of issues each candidate is talking about.
Intention to Vote. Question Wording: (Half sample 1) So far as you know, do
you expect to vote in the elections this coming November? Would you say that you
are definitely going to vote, probably going to vote, or are you just leaning towards

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 Polit Behav

voting? (Half sample 2) Please rate the probability you will vote in the elections this
coming November (on a 0 to 100 scale). Coding (Half sample 1): Not going to
vote = 0, leaning = 1, probably = 2, definitely = 3. Coding (Half sample 2): 0–
19 = 0, 20–50 = 1, 51–80 = 2, 81–100 = 3.
Contacted by a Party/Candidate. Question Wording: Thus far in the campaign,
have you received any mail from a candidate or political party about the election?
How about door-to-door campaigning? Thus far in the campaign, have any
candidates or party workers made any phone calls to you about the election?
Coding: 1 for each contact for a range of 0 to 3 (mean = .8).
Party Identification. Question Wording: Generally speaking, do you consider
yourself to be a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or what? [If Republican or
Democrat] Would you call yourself a strong [Republican or Democrat] or a not very
strong [Republican or Democrat]? [If Independent] Do you think of yourself as
closer to the Republican or Democratic party? Coding: Strong identifiers with either
party were coded as 3, those saying they considered themselves a not very strong
Republican or Democrat as 2, those claiming to be Independent but closer to one of
the parties as 1, and those Independent and closer to neither party, or Other as 0.
Political Knowledge. Question Wording: Who has the final responsibility to
decide if a law is constitutional or not... is it the President, Congress, or the Supreme
Court? Whose responsibility is it to nominate judges to the Federal Courts... the
President, Congress, or the Supreme Court? Do you happen to know which party has
the most members in the House of Representatives in Washington? Do you happen
to know which party has the most members in the U.S. Senate? Coding: each correct
answer was coded 1, and answers to the four questions combined to create a 0–4
scale.
Education. Question Wording: What is the highest grade of school or year of
college you have completed? Did you get a high school diploma or pass a high
school equivalency test (GED)? What is the highest degree that you have earned?
Coding: 0 for 12 years or less and no high school diploma, 1 for 12 years or less
with high school diploma or GED, 2 for 13 or more years.

The Validity of the Diary Study

A student sample

A frequent objection to student samples is that college students are not ‘‘real’’
people. Indeed, Chang and Krosnick’s (2003) research suggests that, as relatively
educated individuals, students might be more sensitive to question wording about
television viewing habits. However, there is no reason to believe that the differences
in recall across the questions should be different for student and adult samples.
Moreover, sampling educated students who had been keeping diaries for four weeks
and were therefore atypically alerted to their viewing habits should, if anything,
lessen the discrepancies between the diaries and surveys.

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Polit Behav

Student subjects may alter their television viewing habits to impress an instructor,
or simply lie about them to indicate watching less television or more serious
programs

The initial instructions students were given strove to limit false reporting by
stressing they should not change their habits, that they would only be noting the
times they watched television, not the programs they watched (with the exception of
news in the second study), and that the instructor would form no judgments on the
basis of how much or when they watched television. Empirically, the results do not
suggest social desirability biases in student diary entries. According to Student
Monitor, for example, college students watch an average of 11 h of television a
week.17 The average amount of television subjects watched per week over the four
weeks, according to their diaries, was 10.4 h, with a range of 9.6 h in Week 3 to
11.0 h in Week 4. The average number of times their diaries said they watched
national and/or local news a week was .8 times each (i.e., less than once a week),
which would not impress many instructors. Finally, I asked members of the Spring
2005 class, after they had received credit for maintaining the diaries and after they
had received their course credit, to let me know whether or not they had kept the
diaries accurately.18 Roughly 50 percent of the class responded and, without
exception, said that their entries had been accurate; some subjects even went to
some length to describe the methods by which they had ensured accuracy. I
compared the discrepancies between diaries and surveys for this subsample of
avowedly accurate diary keepers to the rest of the class. One might think that this
subsample would show smaller discrepancies but there was no statistically
significant difference in the size of the discrepancies; in fact, if anything they
were larger for those subjects who testified to the accuracy of the diaries.

In a four week period subjects may have grown increasingly weary of keeping the
diary, implying growing rather than constant inaccuracy

Again, the consistent reminders subjects received were intended to guard against
this but it is a possibility that can also be tested empirically. If students were
increasingly inaccurate in their diary entries, the correlation between the typical
viewing habits they gave in the surveys and the earlier weeks of the diaries should
be stronger than in later weeks. However, the correlations were very consistent: .57,
.59, .57, and .60 in weeks 1 through 4 respectively.

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17
See www.studentmonitor.com
18
There would not have been concerns about future classes with me because I was in the throes of
leaving the university.

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