Political Science 111
American Politics
Dr. Sellers
September 15, 2008

Paper #1

This first paper assignment concerns the 30-second advertisement that you will create with your group. Your essay needs to suggest a way to assess whether the advertisement influences opinions in our upcoming survey of Davidson students. Your essay should be no longer than a single page.

Your plan needs to include several components:

• A clear statement of the plan and the underlying logic.
• Exactly how will you combine the ad (versions) and the survey questions to indicate whether the ad influenced the respondents' opinions?
• If such influence occurs, what patterns do you expect to find?
• Why do you expect the ads to influence respondents' opinions in this way? What is the causal mechanism? This part of your essay will be stronger if you draw upon the Iyengar and McGrady reading, employing concepts such as framing, priming, persuasion, etc..
• A summary of your advertisement, including a description of the audio and visual components. As I explained in class, it will be possible to have different survey respondents see different versions of your ad. If you use this approach, you need to explain exactly how the ad will differ between the two versions. While we can conceivably incorporate up to four versions, please limit your current plan to two versions at this point.
• A list of the survey questions that capture respondents' opinions (and any changes in those opinions).

Please produce this essay with no coordination or communication with other members of your assigned group in class. I add this requirement to encourage each student to come up with their own ideas, and thereby to maximize the number and diversity of ideas that your group can eventually use. At the same time, you should feel to enlist the assistance of people outside class, from your friends to myself and the Writing Center. Getting comments and help with writing is a technique that all good writers use.

The first page of your paper should only contain identifying information (your name, etc.).  The text of your answers should begin on the second page (with no identifying information on this or later pages).  All the text of your answer should appear on the second page; when grading, I will not read any material past the second page (except notes, supplemetary material (see below), or citation information in a bibliography).  The paper should contain appropriate in-text citations for any sources used.  The detailed information for each citation should then appear in a bibliography on a separate third page. 

If you decide to include the exact wording of your survey questions or a detailed transcript or storyboard for your ad, you can put this supplementary material on a page separate from the main text of your essay. Make sure that you label the supplementary material (e.g. Table 1 or Figure 1), and refer to those labels clearly in the text of your essay.

You should type your paper, using 1-inch margins and Times-New Roman font no smaller than 10 point.  The paper can be either single- or double-spaced.  The paper is due at the start of class on September 24.  Papers turned in after 10 minutes after the scheduled start of class will be considered late.  Paper grades are lowered by ten points (out of 100 total points) for each 24-hour period (after the start of class) that they are late.  Finally, the Honor Code binds the assignment; make sure that you pledge your work.