Andrew J Perrin
Biographic Data
| ID | 3672030 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrew J Perrin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrew J |
| FAMILY NAME | Perrin |
| SIGNATURE | PERRIN A J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0966-0219 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 361 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Civic Engagement, Positive Organizational Sentiment, and Health in Baltimore, Maryland
Election Reflections—and What Comes Next
A curated collection of essays tracking the pulse of American democracy as the second Trump Administration comes into power, this special section considers the campaigns that were waged and previews the battles yet to come
“I have to pick a percentage now”: Indeterminate meanings of moderate survey responses
When the People Rule: Popular Sovereignty in Theory and Practice
In recent decades, popular sovereignty has come under increasing pressure. The rise of populism, often illiberal or authoritarian, has undermined minority rights, individual autonomy, and rule of law. The expansion of international institutions and greater reliance on market and non-governmental organizations have gradually insulated large areas of policymaking from public control. In turn, these developments cast doubt on the viability and desir…
Is Compromise Possible? Be Careful What You Wish For
Race, Immigration, and Support for Donald Trump: Evidence From the 2018 North Carolina Election
One of the longest standing debates in political sociology and political science concerns how people deploy identities and social cues to form political opinions. This debate turns on questions such as, is opinion formation essentially about social class, racial identification, or about other forms of identity or interest? Using original polling data from North Carolina, we model approval for President Trump in the run‐up to the 2018 midterm elec…
Prophets and Patriots: Faith in Democracy across the Political Divide
Civic Hope: How Ordinary Americans Keep Democracy Alive
How College Makes Citizens: Higher Education Experiences and Political Engagement
One function of undergraduate education is supporting successful citizenship later in life. Educational achievement is positively, if variably, related to political engagement. However, questions remain about the role of selection into college education as well as the specific college experiences that facilitate postcollege good citizenship. The aim of this study is to test the independent effect of higher education completion on three forms of p…
Implications of Moving Public Opinion Surveys to a Single-Frame Cell-Phone Random-Digit-Dial Design
With the share of US adults living in households with cell phones climbing over 90 percent (Blumberg and Luke 2016), survey researchers are considering whether it is necessary to continue sampling landlines in addition to cell phones in RDD surveys. This transition raises a number of questions, including whether it will systematically change public opinion estimates, subgroup estimates, long-standing trends, as well as precision. To address these…
Influence of product placement in children's movies on children's snack choices
The unbuilt environment: Culture moderates the built environment for physical activity
Even when PA opportunities existed in this rural county, they were rarely used. This may be the result of culture ("unbuilt environment") that disfavors physical activity even in the presence of features that allow it. Policies promoting built environments designed for healthy lifestyles should consider local culture (shared styles, skills, habits, and beliefs) to maximize positive outcomes
Associations between subjective social status and physical and mental health functioning among patients with hypertension
We examine the cross-sectional association between subjective social status and self-rated physical and mental health functioning in 518 Black and White patients enrolled in a community-based hypertension control research study. We found that (1) subjective social status, measured using both a proximal and distal referent group, was positively associated with physical and mental health functioning scores independent of educational level, househol…
Reductionism and its Critics in Political Science
Political and Cultural Dimensions of Tea Party Support, 2009–2012
The Tea Party Movement (TPM) burst onto the political scene following the 2008 elections. Early on, the movement attracted broad public support and seemed to tap into a variety of cultural concerns rooted in the changing demographic, political, and economic face of the nation. However, some observers questioned whether the Tea Party represented anything more than routine partisan backlash. And what had started as a seemingly grassroots movement t…
From Coalition to Constraint: Modes of Thought in Contemporary American Conservatism
We advocate a relational approach to understanding contemporary conservatism in the United States. Our approach suggests that conservatism provides a cultural repertoire for adherents to use in adapting to new or changed political situations. We provide evidence based on public opinion data that conservatism is neither a single, monolithic ideology nor a mere coalition of convenience among disparate interest groups. Instead, conservatism should b…
Are Children of Parents Who Had Same-Sex Relationships Disadvantaged? A Scientific Evaluation of the No-Differences Hypothesis
In a widely publicized and controversial article, Regnerus (2012a) seeks to evaluate what he calls the “‘no-differences’ paradigm” with respect to outcomes for children of same-sex parents. We consider the scientific claims in Regnerus in light of extant evidence and flaws in the article's evidence and analytical strategy. We find that the evidence presented does not support rejecting the no-differences claim, and therefore the study does not con…
A Transatlantic History of the Social Sciences: Robber Barons, the Third Reich and the Invention of Empirical Social Research
The Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terrorism, Immigration, and Trade Matter
Group Experiment and Other Writings: The Frankfurt School on Public Opinion in Postwar Germany
During the occupation of West Germany after the Second World War, the American authorities commissioned polls to assess the values and opinions of ordinary Germans. They concluded that the fascist attitudes of the Nazi era had weakened to a large degree. Theodor W. Adorno and his Frankfurt School colleagues, who returned in 1949 from the United States, were skeptical. They held that standardized polling was an inadequate and superficial method fo…
Social Theory and Public Opinion
Any study of public opinion must consider the ontological status of the public being represented. In this review, we outline several empirical problems in current public opinion research and illustrate them with a contemporary case: public opinion about same-sex marriage. We then briefly trace historical attempts to grapple with the public in public opinion and then present the most thoroughgoing critiques and defenses of polling. We detail four …
Culture, Society, and Democracy: The Interpretive Approach
The Simultaneous Effect of Social Distance and Physical Distance on the Formation of Neighborhood Ties
Prior studies have separately suggested the importance of physical distance or social distance effects for the creation of neighborhood ties. This project adopts a case study approach and simultaneously tests for propinquity and homophily effects on neighborhood ties by employing a full–network sample from a recently developed New Urbanist neighborhood within a mid–sized southern city. the authors find that physical distance reduces the likelihoo…
The Undeserving Rich: “Moral Values” and the White Working Class 1
White working‐class citizens who vote for the Republican Party have been fodder for much political discussion and speculation recently, and a debate has arisen about the role that “moral values” played in the political decision making of this segment of voters. In this article, we defend a version of the moral values claim. We show that although the Republicans’ policies are unpopular, they are bundled with an overarching moral framework that is …
There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification
One of the most curious aspects of the 2004 presidential election was the strength and resilience of the belief among many Americans that Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11. Scholars have suggested that this belief was the result of a campaign of false information and innuendo from the Bush administration. We call this the information environment explanation. Using a technique of 'challenge interviews' on a sample …
The Simultaneous Effect of Social Distance and Physical Distance on the Formation of Neighborhood Ties
Prior studies have separately suggested the importance of physical distance or social distance effects for the creation of neighborhood ties. This project adopts a case study approach and simultaneously tests for propinquity and homophily effects on neighborhood ties by employing a full–network sample from a recently developed New Urbanist neighborhood within a mid–sized southern city. the authors find that physical distance reduces the likelihoo…
National Threat and Political Culture: Authoritarianism, Antiauthoritarianism, and the September 11 Attacks
This paper uses published letters to the editor of major U.S. newspapers to investigate the cultural effects of a major national threat: the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It is based on a hand‐coded, stratified random sample of 1,100 letters to the editor published in 17 major papers in the United States (544 pre‐September 11, 556 post‐September 11). The letters are drawn from a population of 8,101 published letters. Degrees of both auth…
Who trusts? Race, gender, and the September 11 rally effect among young adults
Social Theory and Public Opinion
Any study of public opinion must consider the ontological status of the public being represented. In this review, we outline several empirical problems in current public opinion research and illustrate them with a contemporary case: public opinion about same-sex marriage. We then briefly trace historical attempts to grapple with the public in public opinion and then present the most thoroughgoing critiques and defenses of polling. We detail four …
There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification
One of the most curious aspects of the 2004 presidential election was the strength and resilience of the belief among many Americans that Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11. Scholars have suggested that this belief was the result of a campaign of false information and innuendo from the Bush administration. We call this the information environment explanation. Using a technique of 'challenge interviews' on a sample …
The Undeserving Rich: “Moral Values” and the White Working Class 1
White working‐class citizens who vote for the Republican Party have been fodder for much political discussion and speculation recently, and a debate has arisen about the role that “moral values” played in the political decision making of this segment of voters. In this article, we defend a version of the moral values claim. We show that although the Republicans’ policies are unpopular, they are bundled with an overarching moral framework that is …
From Coalition to Constraint: Modes of Thought in Contemporary American Conservatism
We advocate a relational approach to understanding contemporary conservatism in the United States. Our approach suggests that conservatism provides a cultural repertoire for adherents to use in adapting to new or changed political situations. We provide evidence based on public opinion data that conservatism is neither a single, monolithic ideology nor a mere coalition of convenience among disparate interest groups. Instead, conservatism should b…
Nested Loyalties: Local Networks' Effects on Neighbourhood and Community Cohesion
Recent scholarship has suggested that cohesion at the neighbourhood level may not translate into greater cohesion for the broader community and may even have detrimental effects. Employing a sample from a recently developed 'new urbanist' community within a southern US city, the paper simultaneously explores the determinants of perceived cohesion with the local neighbourhood and with the broader community. It is found that there is indeed a posit…
Political Microcultures: Linking Civic Life and Democratic Discourse
At the core of democratic citizenship is deliberation: citizens' tendency and capacity for debating issues of common importance. This study considers civic organizations — often found to be political mobilizers — as political microcultures: environments for political discourse that structure participants' understanding of the practice of citizenship. The study consists of 20 focus groups, each composed of members of one of five kinds of civic org…
The Undertheorized Environment: Sociological Theory and the Ontology of Behavioral Genetics
Growing interest in the genetic contribution to human behaviors has led to the growth of the field of behavioral genetics. The authors consider the concept of 'environment' in behavioral genetics and argue that sociology is in a unique position to evaluate and specify a theoretically robust concept of environment. Building on insights from classical and contemporary social theory, the authors argue that the study of genetic influence on behavior …
Parallel Public Spheres: Distance and Discourse in Letters to the Editor
This article examines letters to the editor as one of the ways citizens seek to enact a public sphere using technological mediation. Using a sample of all letters received by a metropolitan newspaper during a three-month period (N = 1,113), the authors demonstrate that the tone and argumentative styles of letters differ with the scope of the issues the letters address. Local issues evoke more reasoned, conciliatory tones, while issues beyond the …
How College Makes Citizens: Higher Education Experiences and Political Engagement
One function of undergraduate education is supporting successful citizenship later in life. Educational achievement is positively, if variably, related to political engagement. However, questions remain about the role of selection into college education as well as the specific college experiences that facilitate postcollege good citizenship. The aim of this study is to test the independent effect of higher education completion on three forms of p…
Contest time: Time, Territory, and Representation in the Postmodern Electoral Crisis
Opinion Research and Publicness: Meinungsforschung und Öffentlichkeit
We present a short introduction to, and the first English language translation of, Theodor W. Adorno's 1964 article, 'Meinungsforschung und Öffentlichkeit.' In this article, Adorno situates the misunderstanding of public opinion within a dialectic of elements of publicness itself: empirical publicness' dependence on a normative ideology of publicness, and modern publicness' tendency to undermine its own principles. He also locates it in the dual …
Race, Immigration, and Support for Donald Trump: Evidence From the 2018 North Carolina Election
One of the longest standing debates in political sociology and political science concerns how people deploy identities and social cues to form political opinions. This debate turns on questions such as, is opinion formation essentially about social class, racial identification, or about other forms of identity or interest? Using original polling data from North Carolina, we model approval for President Trump in the run‐up to the 2018 midterm elec…
Associations between subjective social status and physical and mental health functioning among patients with hypertension
We examine the cross-sectional association between subjective social status and self-rated physical and mental health functioning in 518 Black and White patients enrolled in a community-based hypertension control research study. We found that (1) subjective social status, measured using both a proximal and distal referent group, was positively associated with physical and mental health functioning scores independent of educational level, househol…
Implications of Moving Public Opinion Surveys to a Single-Frame Cell-Phone Random-Digit-Dial Design
With the share of US adults living in households with cell phones climbing over 90 percent (Blumberg and Luke 2016), survey researchers are considering whether it is necessary to continue sampling landlines in addition to cell phones in RDD surveys. This transition raises a number of questions, including whether it will systematically change public opinion estimates, subgroup estimates, long-standing trends, as well as precision. To address these…
The Sociology of Political Representation and Deliberation
The language of democracy and citizenship is infused with a complicated idea: political representation. While political theorists have explored what representation and deliberation should be like, most research on how political discussion actually happens fails directly to address these theoretical standards. This article shows the importance of representation and deliberation to our contemporary ideas about democracy and citizenship. It shows th…
The CodeRead System: Using Natural Language Processing to Automate Coding of Qualitative Data
Most social science research uses data that originate, in one form or another, as written or spoken text. Quantitative researchers code these data very strictly, categorizing answers to questions into fixed groups. In contrast, qualitative researchers typically code free-form text by marking it up according to a set of ideas about the nature and content of the text. This article suggests the use of some elementary techniques from the field of sta…
Influence of product placement in children's movies on children's snack choices
Reductionism and its Critics in Political Science
Civic Hope: How Ordinary Americans Keep Democracy Alive
What is African
What is African? Andrew J. Perrin (bio) Ayi Kwei Armah. Osiris Rising. Popenguine: Per Ankh, 1996. Ayi Kwei Armah’s new novel—based loosely on the Osiris myth cycle—is a dramatic, cautionary tale of the lingering troubles and unfulfilled dreams of independent Africa. At the novel’s core is a strong, centered critique of continuing colonialism and a concerted attempt to develop a local solution. Although the novel disappoints in some ways, its amb…
Women of Courage: Jewish and Italian Immigrant Women in New York
Introduction Leaving for America The Unknown Future Family Structure: Some Theoretical Concepts Fertility and Social Structure Home Life Coming to America?: Work as a Motive for Migration Women and Work in the Golden Medina Work, Unions, and Identity: To Make for Herself a Person Appendix: List of Interviewees
Cyberghetto or Cybertopia? Race, Class, and Gender on the Internet
From the Publisher: Computer-mediated communication and cyberculture are dramatically changing the nature of social relationships. Whether cyberspace will simply retain vestiges of traditional communities with hierarchical social links and class-structured relationships or create new egalitarian social networks remains an open question. The chapters in this volume examine the issue of social justice on the Internet by using a variety of methodolo…
The CodeRead System: Using Natural Language Processing to Automate Coding of Qualitative Data
Most social science research uses data that originate, in one form or another, as written or spoken text. Quantitative researchers code these data very strictly, categorizing answers to questions into fixed groups. In contrast, qualitative researchers typically code free-form text by marking it up according to a set of ideas about the nature and content of the text. This article suggests the use of some elementary techniques from the field of sta…
Building the Trident Network: A Study of the Enrollment of People, Knowledge, and Machines
In Building the Trident Network, Maggie Mort approaches the United Kingdom's Trident submarine and missile system as a sociotechnical network. Drawing on the sociology of scientific and technical knowledge and on actor-network theory, Mort recounts how the Trident program was stabilized in the United Kingdom and brought into production. She uncovers the nature of this success by retelling unofficial histories of Trident, of production roads not t…
National Threat and Political Culture: Authoritarianism, Antiauthoritarianism, and the September 11 Attacks
This paper uses published letters to the editor of major U.S. newspapers to investigate the cultural effects of a major national threat: the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It is based on a hand‐coded, stratified random sample of 1,100 letters to the editor published in 17 major papers in the United States (544 pre‐September 11, 556 post‐September 11). The letters are drawn from a population of 8,101 published letters. Degrees of both auth…
Political Microcultures: Linking Civic Life and Democratic Discourse
At the core of democratic citizenship is deliberation: citizens' tendency and capacity for debating issues of common importance. This study considers civic organizations — often found to be political mobilizers — as political microcultures: environments for political discourse that structure participants' understanding of the practice of citizenship. The study consists of 20 focus groups, each composed of members of one of five kinds of civic org…
Opinion Research and Publicness: Meinungsforschung und Öffentlichkeit
We present a short introduction to, and the first English language translation of, Theodor W. Adorno's 1964 article, 'Meinungsforschung und Öffentlichkeit.' In this article, Adorno situates the misunderstanding of public opinion within a dialectic of elements of publicness itself: empirical publicness' dependence on a normative ideology of publicness, and modern publicness' tendency to undermine its own principles. He also locates it in the dual …
Citizen Speak: The Democratic Imagination in American Life
Nested Loyalties: Local Networks' Effects on Neighbourhood and Community Cohesion
Recent scholarship has suggested that cohesion at the neighbourhood level may not translate into greater cohesion for the broader community and may even have detrimental effects. Employing a sample from a recently developed 'new urbanist' community within a southern US city, the paper simultaneously explores the determinants of perceived cohesion with the local neighbourhood and with the broader community. It is found that there is indeed a posit…
Contest time: Time, Territory, and Representation in the Postmodern Electoral Crisis
The Undertheorized Environment: Sociological Theory and the Ontology of Behavioral Genetics
Growing interest in the genetic contribution to human behaviors has led to the growth of the field of behavioral genetics. The authors consider the concept of 'environment' in behavioral genetics and argue that sociology is in a unique position to evaluate and specify a theoretically robust concept of environment. Building on insights from classical and contemporary social theory, the authors argue that the study of genetic influence on behavior …
The Sociology of Political Representation and Deliberation
The language of democracy and citizenship is infused with a complicated idea: political representation. While political theorists have explored what representation and deliberation should be like, most research on how political discussion actually happens fails directly to address these theoretical standards. This article shows the importance of representation and deliberation to our contemporary ideas about democracy and citizenship. It shows th…
Parallel Public Spheres: Distance and Discourse in Letters to the Editor
This article examines letters to the editor as one of the ways citizens seek to enact a public sphere using technological mediation. Using a sample of all letters received by a metropolitan newspaper during a three-month period (N = 1,113), the authors demonstrate that the tone and argumentative styles of letters differ with the scope of the issues the letters address. Local issues evoke more reasoned, conciliatory tones, while issues beyond the …
The Simultaneous Effect of Social Distance and Physical Distance on the Formation of Neighborhood Ties
Prior studies have separately suggested the importance of physical distance or social distance effects for the creation of neighborhood ties. This project adopts a case study approach and simultaneously tests for propinquity and homophily effects on neighborhood ties by employing a full–network sample from a recently developed New Urbanist neighborhood within a mid–sized southern city. the authors find that physical distance reduces the likelihoo…
The Undeserving Rich: “Moral Values” and the White Working Class 1
White working‐class citizens who vote for the Republican Party have been fodder for much political discussion and speculation recently, and a debate has arisen about the role that “moral values” played in the political decision making of this segment of voters. In this article, we defend a version of the moral values claim. We show that although the Republicans’ policies are unpopular, they are bundled with an overarching moral framework that is …
There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification
One of the most curious aspects of the 2004 presidential election was the strength and resilience of the belief among many Americans that Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11. Scholars have suggested that this belief was the result of a campaign of false information and innuendo from the Bush administration. We call this the information environment explanation. Using a technique of 'challenge interviews' on a sample …
Who trusts? Race, gender, and the September 11 rally effect among young adults
Culture, Society, and Democracy: The Interpretive Approach
Group Experiment and Other Writings: The Frankfurt School on Public Opinion in Postwar Germany
During the occupation of West Germany after the Second World War, the American authorities commissioned polls to assess the values and opinions of ordinary Germans. They concluded that the fascist attitudes of the Nazi era had weakened to a large degree. Theodor W. Adorno and his Frankfurt School colleagues, who returned in 1949 from the United States, were skeptical. They held that standardized polling was an inadequate and superficial method fo…
Social Theory and Public Opinion
Any study of public opinion must consider the ontological status of the public being represented. In this review, we outline several empirical problems in current public opinion research and illustrate them with a contemporary case: public opinion about same-sex marriage. We then briefly trace historical attempts to grapple with the public in public opinion and then present the most thoroughgoing critiques and defenses of polling. We detail four …
The Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terrorism, Immigration, and Trade Matter
Are Children of Parents Who Had Same-Sex Relationships Disadvantaged? A Scientific Evaluation of the No-Differences Hypothesis
In a widely publicized and controversial article, Regnerus (2012a) seeks to evaluate what he calls the “‘no-differences’ paradigm” with respect to outcomes for children of same-sex parents. We consider the scientific claims in Regnerus in light of extant evidence and flaws in the article's evidence and analytical strategy. We find that the evidence presented does not support rejecting the no-differences claim, and therefore the study does not con…
A Transatlantic History of the Social Sciences: Robber Barons, the Third Reich and the Invention of Empirical Social Research
Political and Cultural Dimensions of Tea Party Support, 2009–2012
The Tea Party Movement (TPM) burst onto the political scene following the 2008 elections. Early on, the movement attracted broad public support and seemed to tap into a variety of cultural concerns rooted in the changing demographic, political, and economic face of the nation. However, some observers questioned whether the Tea Party represented anything more than routine partisan backlash. And what had started as a seemingly grassroots movement t…
Political science (30 works) · Sociology (29 works) · Law (21 works) · Politics (19 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (10 works) · Democracy (9 works) · Epistemology (9 works)