This paper is concerned with social desirability as a source of bias and invalidity in survey studies. Two components of social desirability-"trait desirability" and "need for siscal approval"-are examined to assess the extent to which they effect people's responses to several sociological measures (e.g., happiness, religiosity). This analysis reveals that both components of a social-desirability response set, while generally unrelated to one another, are independently related to our dependent variables, people's responses on the various measures. The more important of the two components, trait desirability, is then examined with regard to its effect on the relationship between people's sexual status and the dependent variables. This introduction to the analysis of trait desirability as a test factor tends to specify both the magnitude and the direction of the original relationships involving sexual status. Finally, the results are discussed with regard to their implications for the validity of various so...

Some Effects of "Social Desirability" in Survey Studies

This study examines the conceptualization of representation, particularly the problems resulting from conceiving of it simply in terms of congruence between the attitudes of constituents and of representatives on policy questions. It examines critically some of the work that followed the innovative study of Miller and Stokes. Regarding representation as responsiveness, it identifies four components of this concept: policy, service, allocation, and symbolic responsiveness.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/439340.pdf

The Puzzle of Representation: Specifying Components of Responsiveness

We consider the relationship between the preferences of American voters and the preferences of the U.S. legislators who represent them. Using an Internet-based, national opinion survey in conjunction with legislator voting records from the 109th and 110th Congresses, we show that members of Congress are more extreme than their constituents, i.e., that there is a lack of congruence between American voters and members of Congress. We also show that when a congressional legislator is replaced by a new member of the opposite party, one relative extremist is replaced by an opposing extremist. We call this leapfrog representation, a form of representation that leaves moderates with a dearth of representation in Congress. We see evidence of leapfrog representation in states and House districts and in the aggregate as well: the median member of the 109th House was too conservative compared to the median American voter, yet the median of the 110th House was too liberal. Thus, the median American voter was leapfrogged when the 109th House transitioned to the 110th. Although turnover between the 109th and 110th Senates occurred at approximately the same rate as between the 109th and 110th Houses, the Senate appears to be a more moderate institution whose median member does not move as abruptly as that of the House.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0003055410000316

Leapfrog Representation and Extremism: A Study of American Voters and Their Members in Congress

Interest group theory traditionally assumed that policies advocated by group representatives in some sense grow out of the interests or values of the group's members. Mancur Olson and others compelled important revisions in this assumption, but still left the process of interest advocacy to membership groups. It is contended here that institutions, such as corporations or local governments, occupy a dominant position with respect to interest representation in Washington, and this finding requires substantial revisions in both theoretical and descriptive formulations of the governmental process.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S000305540025243X

Interest Representation: The Dominance of Institutions

Community policing creates the expectation that oficers will become more selective in making arrests and that those decisions will be influenced more by extralegal considerations and less by legal ones. Data on 451 nontraffic police-suspect encounters were drawn from ridealong observations in Richmond, Virginia, where the police department was implementing community policing. The arrest/no arrest decision is regressed on variables representing legal and extralegal characteristics of the situation. Legal variables show much stronger effects than extralegal ones, but that depends upon the officer's attitude toward community policing. Supporters of community policing are, as predicted, more selective in making arrests and much less influenced by legal variables than are officers with negative views. However, pro-community-policing officers are like negative officers in the extent of influence exerted by extralegal factors. There are some differences between the two groups of officers on the strength and direction of effects of predictor variables taken individually, but only 1 of 17 is significant. Thus, in a time of community policing, officers who support it do manifest some arrest decision patterns distinguishable from those of colleagues who adhere to a more traditional view of law enforcement.

Law enforcement in a time of community policing

The problem of representation is central to all discussions of the functions of legislatures or the behavior of legislators. For it is commonly taken for granted that, in democratic political systems, legislatures are both legitimate and authoritative decision-making institutions, and that it is their representative character which makes them authoritative and legitimate. Through the process of representation, presumably, legislatures are empowered to act for the whole body politic and are legitimized. And because, by virtue of representation, they participate in legislation, the represented accept legislative decisions as authoritative. But agreement about the meaning of the term “representation” hardly goes beyond a general consensus regarding the context within which it is appropriately used. The history of political theory is studded with definitions of representation, usually embedded in ideological assumptions and postulates which cannot serve the uses of empirical research without conceptual clarification.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1951941.pdf

William Buchanan

Papers

The Role of the Representative: Some Empirical Observations on the Theory of Edmund Burke *

The Legislative System: Explorations in Legislative Behavior.

The legislative system : explorations in legislative behavior

The Political Socialization of American State Legislators

The Legislator as Specialist