Showing papers by "Paul DiMaggio published in 1996"

Have Americans' social attitudes become more polarized?

Abstract: Many observers have asserted with little evidence that Americans' social opinions have become polarized. Using General Social Survey and National Election Survey social attitude items that have been repeated regularly over 20 years, the authors ask (1) Have Americans' opinions become more dispersed (higher variance)? (2) Have distributions become flatter or more bimodal (declining kurtosis)? (3) Have opinions become more ideologically constrained within and across opinion domains? (4) Have paired social groups become more different in their opinions? The authors find little evidence of polarization over the past two decades, with attitudes toward abortion and opinion differences between Republican and Democratic party identifiers the exceptional cases.

Data on Arts Organizations: A Review and Needs Assessment, with Design Implications

Abstract: This project describes the data resources on arts organizations that are currently available to inform the efforts of policy makers, arts managers, and researchers working in the arts field. It assesses the adequacy of different data sources for identifying the population of arts and cultural organizations in a community. The report is based on a review of more than a dozen sources of information about arts and cultural organizations, interviews with researchers and data specialists, and an empirical study of arts organizations in three metropolitan areas - Philadelphia, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Minneapolis-St. Paul. The report concludes with recommendations for improving data quality and for establishing an ongoing national database on the arts sector.