16
toward several social/cultural issues. But as we mentioned briefly earlier, sophistication does not
predict liberal economic attitudes -- if anything, the opposite is true (Althaus, 1998).
Nevertheless, the potential confound of sophistication should not be ignored.
The following section will describe the research design, data, and methodology we use to
evaluate Lakoff’s theory, while taking into account each of the alternate hypotheses and
confounds described above.
Research Design and Methodology
Drawing on data from the 2000 National Election Study (Burns et al. 2001), we specified
a series of models predicting various political values, attitudes, and choices among 1084 adult
citizens, interviewed between September 5
th
and December 18
th
of 2000.
9
The key independent
variable in our models, designed to capture variance in nurturant vs. disciplinarian visions of
parental authority, is an index of opinions regarding the proper qualities that children “should
have,” particularly in relation to adults. The specific wording of the question set is as follows:
“Although there are a number of qualities that people feel children should have, every person
thinks that some are more important than others. I am going to read you pairs of desirable
qualities. Please tell me which one you think is more important for children to have.
Independence or respect for elders? Curiosity or good manners? Being considerate or well
behaved?” We considered preferences for respectful, mannerly and/or well behaved children to
be indicative of a disciplinarian vision of authority (coded as “zero” in each case). By contrast,
we classified preferences for curious, independent, and considerate children as manifesting a
9
These dates encompass the full range of two separate data collections: the pre-election study
(September 5
th
through election day) and the post-election study (November 8
th
through
December 18
th
).
Convention