Catalina Ojeda
Biographic Data
| ID | 764088 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Catalina Ojeda |
| GIVEN NAMES | Catalina |
| FAMILY NAME | Ojeda |
| SIGNATURE | OJEDA C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Tennessee at Knoxville |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9775-8341 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 293 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Identifying Political Habits Beyond Voting
Voting is repetitive and persistent, but these ideas have received scarce attention when it comes to other political behaviors. Do repetition and persistence characterize political acts beyond voting? Drawing together existing theories of participation with the idea of habit, we present an integrated model of repeated behavior. We then analyze the characteristics of 17 different political acts using two methodological approaches including a “cond…
Institutional Design Preferences Among German and US Citizens: Results from a Factorial Survey Experiment
How do institutional parameters affect citizens’ evaluations of a political system as democratic? While attitudes to existing institutions have mostly been studied only in terms of support, this article uses experimental data to explore and compare citizens’ institutional design preferences in Germany and the US. Findings show that participation of voters in decision-making, deliberative decision-making, delegate representation, and the presence …
The Health-Representation Gap: We Don’t Know Much But What We Know Is Concerning
There is now evidence that disparities in health are associated with inequalities in representation, a finding we refer to as the health-representation gap . Recently, Micah Tan (2025) corroborated this finding after correcting errors in analyses we conducted on this topic years ago (Pacheco and Ojeda 2020). In this paper, we highlight and reassess the conclusions Tan draws about the shape and origin of the gap. We then take stock of existing stu…
A quiet and invisible challenge: Depressive symptoms and the evaluation of democratic institutions
The Politics of Personal Crisis: How Life Disruptions Shape Political Participation
Economic risk and instability are urgent and central facts in the lives of increasing numbers of Americans. Though experienced as “personal,” the causes of life disruptions like unemployment, eviction, and loss of health insurance are also deeply political. In this paper, we build on existing “single crisis” studies to offer a comprehensive theoretical and empirical picture of how life disruptions shape political behavior. We use several large su…
Depression and the gender gap in political interest
It is well-documented that women report less interest in politics than men on average. We argue that depression - and the differential strategies used to cope with its symptoms - contribute to this persistent gender gap in political interest. While women tend to rely on rumination when experiencing depression, there is less agreement on men's coping strategies. Depressive symptoms should thus more greatly reduce political interest among women tha…
José Ramón Valenzuela Álvarez-Salamanca y Christian Cancino del Castillo (2021). Absurda economía. Alineando el desarrollo económico con el medioambiente. Santiago de Chile: RIL Editores, 286 pp
Uno de los propósitos del libro de José Ramón Valenzuela Álvarez-Salamanca y Christian Cancino del Castillo es aportar al conocimiento de los lectores y las lectoras sobre el desajuste entre el desarrollo económico y el medio ambiente, en el que destaca la temática de la polución y su relación con el enfoque dominante de la economía. Este tema levanta una “profunda” preocupación en estas últimas décadas, debido a los efectos visibles de la acción…
The Role of Child Perception and Motivation in Political Socialization – Erratum
Health and Voting in Rural America
This research explores the impact of health on voter turnout, with the goal of uncovering important variation in dynamics across rural communities. Drawing on the results of county and individual-level analyses, including novel survey data from an Appalachian community, this study finds that health matters less for rural voters. Models using county-level data indicate that poor health is significantly and negatively related to voter turnout acros…
The Role of Child Perception and Motivation in Political Socialization
Most of what is known regarding political socialization treats parent–child concordance as evidence of transmission. This direct-transmission approach remains agnostic regarding how socialization occurs, whether traits have a role in a child's ability to identify and understand their parent's values or their motivation to adopt their parents’ values. This article advances a perception-adoption approach to unpack these microprocesses of socializat…
Democracy and Depression: A Cross-National Study of Depressive Symptoms and Nonparticipation
Depression is the most common mental health disorder. It has consequences not only on individuals but also on social and political levels. We argue that depressive symptoms impair political participation by reducing the motivation and physical energy of sufferers. We test our hypotheses by conducting regression analyses of four nationally representative cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys that collectively span many democracies. Our results …
A Healthy Democracy? Evidence of Unequal Representation Across Health Status
The Political Responses of Virtual Assistants
What would a machine say about politics if it could speak? Because of virtual assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, social scientists are now equipped to answer this question. Yet little is known about what these machines say about politics or why they say it, even though their political responses are potentially consequential given their widespread usage. In this article, I survey six virtual assistants and find that they typically…
Intersectionality, Depression, and Voter Turnout
Context: This article untangles the effects of depression on voter turnout among blacks and whites and among women and men and considers several factors—income, health insurance, church attendance, group consciousness, and empowerment—that may mitigate the negative effects of depression on turnout. Methods: The authors estimated regression models of voter turnout on depression across race and gender groups using data from the Panel Study of Incom…
Federalism and the Racialization of Welfare Policy
Considerable research shows that welfare policies are stricter in states with large African American caseloads. We challenge the universality of this claim by extending Soss, Fording, and Schram's Racial Classification Model to account for the multidimensionality of policy, the constraints imposed by federal funding, and state legislators' ideological goals and racial stereotypes. Examining the work requirements, sanctions, time limits, and exemp…
Measuring Complex State Policies: Pitfalls and Considerations, with an Application to Race and Welfare Policy
Welfare policy is multidimensional because of the political compromises, competing goals, and federalist structure underpinning it. This complexity has hindered measurement and, therefore, the comparability of research on race and welfare policy. This paper describes a measurement strategy that is transparent, replicable, and attuned to matching the assumptions of statistical models to the policy process. We demonstrate that this strategy leads t…
Health and Voting in Young Adulthood
Do changes in health lead to changes in the probability of voting? Using two longitudinal datasets, this article looks at the impact of three measures of health – physical health, mental health and overall well-being – on voting trajectories in young adulthood. The results show that self-rated health is associated with a lower probability of voting in one’s first election, depression is related to a decline in turnout over time and physical limit…
The Two Income‐Participation Gaps
Scholars have long attributed the income‐participation gap—which is the observation that the rich participate in politics more than the poor—to income‐based differences in the resources, recruitment, mobilization, and psychology underpinning political behavior. I argue that these explanations require a longer time horizon than the empirical evidence permits. Education, for example, typically ends in young adulthood and so cannot logically mediate…
The Effect of 9/11 on the Heritability of Political Trust
Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, a rally effect led to a precipitous rise in political trust. However, the increase in political trust concealed a simultaneous decline among a smaller portion of the population. This article examines the psychological mechanisms underlying these heterogeneous attitudes towards government and shows that a biosocial model best explains the observed patterns of response. The interplay of genetic and envir…
Depression and Political Participation
Objective I hypothesize that individuals with depression lack the motivation and physical capacity required to participate in politics due to somatic problems and feelings of hopelessness and apathy. Furthermore, I hypothesize that depression in adolescence can have negative downstream consequences for participation in young adulthood. Method Using the 1998 General Social Survey and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I employ l…
Accounting for the Child in the Transmission of Party Identification
The transmission of party identification from parent to child is one of the most important components of political socialization in the United States. Research shows that children learn their party identification from their parents, and parents drive the learning process. The vast majority of studies thus treats children as passive recipients of information and assumes that parent-child concordance equals transmission. Rather than relying on a si…
Depression and Political Participation
Objective I hypothesize that individuals with depression lack the motivation and physical capacity required to participate in politics due to somatic problems and feelings of hopelessness and apathy. Furthermore, I hypothesize that depression in adolescence can have negative downstream consequences for participation in young adulthood. Method Using the 1998 General Social Survey and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I employ l…
Accounting for the Child in the Transmission of Party Identification
The transmission of party identification from parent to child is one of the most important components of political socialization in the United States. Research shows that children learn their party identification from their parents, and parents drive the learning process. The vast majority of studies thus treats children as passive recipients of information and assumes that parent-child concordance equals transmission. Rather than relying on a si…
Democracy and Depression: A Cross-National Study of Depressive Symptoms and Nonparticipation
Depression is the most common mental health disorder. It has consequences not only on individuals but also on social and political levels. We argue that depressive symptoms impair political participation by reducing the motivation and physical energy of sufferers. We test our hypotheses by conducting regression analyses of four nationally representative cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys that collectively span many democracies. Our results …
Health and Voting in Young Adulthood
Do changes in health lead to changes in the probability of voting? Using two longitudinal datasets, this article looks at the impact of three measures of health – physical health, mental health and overall well-being – on voting trajectories in young adulthood. The results show that self-rated health is associated with a lower probability of voting in one’s first election, depression is related to a decline in turnout over time and physical limit…
The Two Income‐Participation Gaps
Scholars have long attributed the income‐participation gap—which is the observation that the rich participate in politics more than the poor—to income‐based differences in the resources, recruitment, mobilization, and psychology underpinning political behavior. I argue that these explanations require a longer time horizon than the empirical evidence permits. Education, for example, typically ends in young adulthood and so cannot logically mediate…
The Role of Child Perception and Motivation in Political Socialization
Most of what is known regarding political socialization treats parent–child concordance as evidence of transmission. This direct-transmission approach remains agnostic regarding how socialization occurs, whether traits have a role in a child's ability to identify and understand their parent's values or their motivation to adopt their parents’ values. This article advances a perception-adoption approach to unpack these microprocesses of socializat…
Intersectionality, Depression, and Voter Turnout
Context: This article untangles the effects of depression on voter turnout among blacks and whites and among women and men and considers several factors—income, health insurance, church attendance, group consciousness, and empowerment—that may mitigate the negative effects of depression on turnout. Methods: The authors estimated regression models of voter turnout on depression across race and gender groups using data from the Panel Study of Incom…
The Effect of 9/11 on the Heritability of Political Trust
Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, a rally effect led to a precipitous rise in political trust. However, the increase in political trust concealed a simultaneous decline among a smaller portion of the population. This article examines the psychological mechanisms underlying these heterogeneous attitudes towards government and shows that a biosocial model best explains the observed patterns of response. The interplay of genetic and envir…
A Healthy Democracy? Evidence of Unequal Representation Across Health Status
Measuring Complex State Policies: Pitfalls and Considerations, with an Application to Race and Welfare Policy
Welfare policy is multidimensional because of the political compromises, competing goals, and federalist structure underpinning it. This complexity has hindered measurement and, therefore, the comparability of research on race and welfare policy. This paper describes a measurement strategy that is transparent, replicable, and attuned to matching the assumptions of statistical models to the policy process. We demonstrate that this strategy leads t…
Federalism and the Racialization of Welfare Policy
Considerable research shows that welfare policies are stricter in states with large African American caseloads. We challenge the universality of this claim by extending Soss, Fording, and Schram's Racial Classification Model to account for the multidimensionality of policy, the constraints imposed by federal funding, and state legislators' ideological goals and racial stereotypes. Examining the work requirements, sanctions, time limits, and exemp…
The Politics of Personal Crisis: How Life Disruptions Shape Political Participation
Economic risk and instability are urgent and central facts in the lives of increasing numbers of Americans. Though experienced as “personal,” the causes of life disruptions like unemployment, eviction, and loss of health insurance are also deeply political. In this paper, we build on existing “single crisis” studies to offer a comprehensive theoretical and empirical picture of how life disruptions shape political behavior. We use several large su…
Depression and the gender gap in political interest
It is well-documented that women report less interest in politics than men on average. We argue that depression - and the differential strategies used to cope with its symptoms - contribute to this persistent gender gap in political interest. While women tend to rely on rumination when experiencing depression, there is less agreement on men's coping strategies. Depressive symptoms should thus more greatly reduce political interest among women tha…
A quiet and invisible challenge: Depressive symptoms and the evaluation of democratic institutions
The Political Responses of Virtual Assistants
What would a machine say about politics if it could speak? Because of virtual assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, social scientists are now equipped to answer this question. Yet little is known about what these machines say about politics or why they say it, even though their political responses are potentially consequential given their widespread usage. In this article, I survey six virtual assistants and find that they typically…
Depression and Political Participation
Objective I hypothesize that individuals with depression lack the motivation and physical capacity required to participate in politics due to somatic problems and feelings of hopelessness and apathy. Furthermore, I hypothesize that depression in adolescence can have negative downstream consequences for participation in young adulthood. Method Using the 1998 General Social Survey and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I employ l…
Accounting for the Child in the Transmission of Party Identification
The transmission of party identification from parent to child is one of the most important components of political socialization in the United States. Research shows that children learn their party identification from their parents, and parents drive the learning process. The vast majority of studies thus treats children as passive recipients of information and assumes that parent-child concordance equals transmission. Rather than relying on a si…
The Effect of 9/11 on the Heritability of Political Trust
Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, a rally effect led to a precipitous rise in political trust. However, the increase in political trust concealed a simultaneous decline among a smaller portion of the population. This article examines the psychological mechanisms underlying these heterogeneous attitudes towards government and shows that a biosocial model best explains the observed patterns of response. The interplay of genetic and envir…
The Two Income‐Participation Gaps
Scholars have long attributed the income‐participation gap—which is the observation that the rich participate in politics more than the poor—to income‐based differences in the resources, recruitment, mobilization, and psychology underpinning political behavior. I argue that these explanations require a longer time horizon than the empirical evidence permits. Education, for example, typically ends in young adulthood and so cannot logically mediate…
The Political Responses of Virtual Assistants
What would a machine say about politics if it could speak? Because of virtual assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, social scientists are now equipped to answer this question. Yet little is known about what these machines say about politics or why they say it, even though their political responses are potentially consequential given their widespread usage. In this article, I survey six virtual assistants and find that they typically…
Intersectionality, Depression, and Voter Turnout
Context: This article untangles the effects of depression on voter turnout among blacks and whites and among women and men and considers several factors—income, health insurance, church attendance, group consciousness, and empowerment—that may mitigate the negative effects of depression on turnout. Methods: The authors estimated regression models of voter turnout on depression across race and gender groups using data from the Panel Study of Incom…
Federalism and the Racialization of Welfare Policy
Considerable research shows that welfare policies are stricter in states with large African American caseloads. We challenge the universality of this claim by extending Soss, Fording, and Schram's Racial Classification Model to account for the multidimensionality of policy, the constraints imposed by federal funding, and state legislators' ideological goals and racial stereotypes. Examining the work requirements, sanctions, time limits, and exemp…
Measuring Complex State Policies: Pitfalls and Considerations, with an Application to Race and Welfare Policy
Welfare policy is multidimensional because of the political compromises, competing goals, and federalist structure underpinning it. This complexity has hindered measurement and, therefore, the comparability of research on race and welfare policy. This paper describes a measurement strategy that is transparent, replicable, and attuned to matching the assumptions of statistical models to the policy process. We demonstrate that this strategy leads t…
Health and Voting in Young Adulthood
Do changes in health lead to changes in the probability of voting? Using two longitudinal datasets, this article looks at the impact of three measures of health – physical health, mental health and overall well-being – on voting trajectories in young adulthood. The results show that self-rated health is associated with a lower probability of voting in one’s first election, depression is related to a decline in turnout over time and physical limit…
A Healthy Democracy? Evidence of Unequal Representation Across Health Status
Health and Voting in Rural America
This research explores the impact of health on voter turnout, with the goal of uncovering important variation in dynamics across rural communities. Drawing on the results of county and individual-level analyses, including novel survey data from an Appalachian community, this study finds that health matters less for rural voters. Models using county-level data indicate that poor health is significantly and negatively related to voter turnout acros…
The Role of Child Perception and Motivation in Political Socialization
Most of what is known regarding political socialization treats parent–child concordance as evidence of transmission. This direct-transmission approach remains agnostic regarding how socialization occurs, whether traits have a role in a child's ability to identify and understand their parent's values or their motivation to adopt their parents’ values. This article advances a perception-adoption approach to unpack these microprocesses of socializat…
Democracy and Depression: A Cross-National Study of Depressive Symptoms and Nonparticipation
Depression is the most common mental health disorder. It has consequences not only on individuals but also on social and political levels. We argue that depressive symptoms impair political participation by reducing the motivation and physical energy of sufferers. We test our hypotheses by conducting regression analyses of four nationally representative cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys that collectively span many democracies. Our results …
José Ramón Valenzuela Álvarez-Salamanca y Christian Cancino del Castillo (2021). Absurda economía. Alineando el desarrollo económico con el medioambiente. Santiago de Chile: RIL Editores, 286 pp
Uno de los propósitos del libro de José Ramón Valenzuela Álvarez-Salamanca y Christian Cancino del Castillo es aportar al conocimiento de los lectores y las lectoras sobre el desajuste entre el desarrollo económico y el medio ambiente, en el que destaca la temática de la polución y su relación con el enfoque dominante de la economía. Este tema levanta una “profunda” preocupación en estas últimas décadas, debido a los efectos visibles de la acción…
The Role of Child Perception and Motivation in Political Socialization – Erratum
Depression and the gender gap in political interest
It is well-documented that women report less interest in politics than men on average. We argue that depression - and the differential strategies used to cope with its symptoms - contribute to this persistent gender gap in political interest. While women tend to rely on rumination when experiencing depression, there is less agreement on men's coping strategies. Depressive symptoms should thus more greatly reduce political interest among women tha…
The Politics of Personal Crisis: How Life Disruptions Shape Political Participation
Economic risk and instability are urgent and central facts in the lives of increasing numbers of Americans. Though experienced as “personal,” the causes of life disruptions like unemployment, eviction, and loss of health insurance are also deeply political. In this paper, we build on existing “single crisis” studies to offer a comprehensive theoretical and empirical picture of how life disruptions shape political behavior. We use several large su…
Institutional Design Preferences Among German and US Citizens: Results from a Factorial Survey Experiment
How do institutional parameters affect citizens’ evaluations of a political system as democratic? While attitudes to existing institutions have mostly been studied only in terms of support, this article uses experimental data to explore and compare citizens’ institutional design preferences in Germany and the US. Findings show that participation of voters in decision-making, deliberative decision-making, delegate representation, and the presence …
The Health-Representation Gap: We Don’t Know Much But What We Know Is Concerning
There is now evidence that disparities in health are associated with inequalities in representation, a finding we refer to as the health-representation gap . Recently, Micah Tan (2025) corroborated this finding after correcting errors in analyses we conducted on this topic years ago (Pacheco and Ojeda 2020). In this paper, we highlight and reassess the conclusions Tan draws about the shape and origin of the gap. We then take stock of existing stu…
A quiet and invisible challenge: Depressive symptoms and the evaluation of democratic institutions
Identifying Political Habits Beyond Voting
Voting is repetitive and persistent, but these ideas have received scarce attention when it comes to other political behaviors. Do repetition and persistence characterize political acts beyond voting? Drawing together existing theories of participation with the idea of habit, we present an integrated model of repeated behavior. We then analyze the characteristics of 17 different political acts using two methodological approaches including a “cond…
Politics (18 works) · Political science (17 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Sociology (7 works)