Kaylyn Jackson Schiff
Biographic Data
| ID | 922944 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kaylyn Jackson Schiff |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kaylyn Jackson |
| FAMILY NAME | Schiff |
| SIGNATURE | SCHIFF K J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Purdue University West Lafayette |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4239-5915 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 104 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
How New Issues Become Polarized: Partisan Triggers and Subsystem Shopping in Early AI Policymaking
Early AI policymaking in the United States appeared bipartisan, but subsequent developments raise the question of whether AI policy will become more polarized over time. To examine how partisanship takes root around novel policy issues, we perform a mixed‐methods study, analyzing survey data from 129 state legislators in 44 states and performing four case studies featuring legislative debates over enacted AI regulation in Idaho, Colorado, and Ill…
Disagreement driven disengagement? Policymaker perceptions of citizen identity and responsiveness to political communication
Do perceptions of citizen identity affect policymaker responsiveness to different communication channels? This study considers that policymakers prefer to engage through communication channels that are more highly used by their supporters. To investigate this possibility, I field complementary surveys of local policymakers and the US public. I find some evidence that policymakers are more willing to respond when their supporters are seen as more …
Assessing the Impact of Informational Interventions on Perceptions of School Quality
Perceptions of school quality affect many aspects of education policy and politics. Using two randomized survey experiments, we studied the factors that individuals use to evaluate school quality. Our surveys included two novel components: text analysis of open-ended responses and videos highlighting different perspectives on assessing school quality. While we found that individuals respond most strongly to test scores, we also found that a video…
The Liar's Dividend: Can Politicians Claim Misinformation to Evade Accountability
This study addresses the phenomenon of misinformation about misinformation, or politicians "crying wolf" over fake news. Strategic and false claims that stories are fake news or deepfakes may benefit politicians by helping them maintain support after a scandal. We posit that this benefit, known as the "liar's dividend," may be achieved through two politician strategies: by invoking informational uncertainty or by encouraging oppositional rallying…
Speaking of reform: Experimental insights into influencing police executives' perspectives on civilian oversight
Research summary This study investigates how information about public opinion and peer practices influences police executives' views on civilian review boards. We applied structural topic modeling in an experimental paradigm, a novel approach diverging from traditional experimental survey methods, to the open‐ended responses of 1331 police executives collected in an original survey experiment. This technique enables the capture of subtle shifts i…
Police reform from the top down: Experimental evidence on police executive support for civilian oversight
The accountability of police to the public is imperative for a functioning democracy. The opinions of police executives—pivotal actors for implementing oversight policies—are an understudied, critical component of successful reform efforts. We use a pre‐registered survey experiment administered to all U.S. municipal police chiefs and county sheriffs to assess whether police executives’ attitudes towards civilian oversight are responsive to 1) sta…
Hometown Advantage: Voter Preferences for Community Embeddedness in Local Contests
Every year, Americans elect hundreds of thousands of candidates to local public office, typically in low-attention, nonpartisan races. How do voters evaluate candidates in these sorts of elections? Previous research suggests that, absent party cues, voters rely on a set of heuristic shortcuts – including the candidate’s name, profession, and interest group endorsements – to decide whom to support. In this paper, we suggest that community embedded…
Police Shooting Statistics and Public Support for Police Reforms
Does providing information about police shootings influence policing reform preferences? We conducted an online survey experiment in 2021 among approximately 2,600 residents of 10 large US cities. It incorporated original data we collected on police shootings of civilians. After respondents estimated the number of police shootings in their cities in 2020, we randomized subjects into three treatment groups and a control group. Treatments included …
Digital transparency and citizen participation: Evidence from the online crowdsourcing platform of the City of Sacramento
Institutional factors driving citizen perceptions of AI in government: Evidence from a survey experiment on policing
Law enforcement agencies are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence (AI)‐powered tools. While prior work emphasizes the technological features driving public opinion, we investigate how public trust and support for AI in government vary with the institutional context. We administer a pre‐registered survey experiment to 4200 respondents about AI use cases in policing to measure responsiveness to three key institutional factors: bureaucratic…
Narratives and expert information in agenda‐setting: Experimental evidence on state legislator engagement with artificial intelligence policy
Are narratives as influential in gaining the attention of policymakers as expert information, including for complex, technical policy domains such as artificial intelligence (AI) policy? This pre‐registered study uses a field experiment to evaluate legislator responsiveness to policy entrepreneur outreach. In partnership with a leading AI think tank, we send more than 7300 U.S. state legislative offices emails about AI policy containing an influe…
Are Police Racially Biased in the Decision to Shoot
We present a theoretical model predicting that racially biased policing produces (1) more use of potentially lethal force by firearms against Black civilians than against White civilians and (2) lower fatality rates for Black civilians than White civilians. We empirically evaluate this second prediction with original officer-involved shooting data from 2010 to 2017 for eight local police jurisdictions, finding that Black fatality rates are signif…
Public Support for Professional Legislatures
Evidence suggests that well-funded, professional legislatures more effectively provide constituents with their preferred policies and may improve social welfare. Yet, legislative resources across state legislatures have stagnated or dwindled at least in part due to public antagonism toward increasing representatives’ salaries. We argue that one reason voters oppose legislative resources, like salary and staff, is that they are unaware of the pote…
Does collective citizen input impact government service provision? Evidence from SeeClickFix requests
Does collective citizen input impact government priorities and performance in service provision? As cities increasingly offer interactive issue reporting options through online platforms and mobile apps, I investigate whether comments and follows on requests drive faster issue resolution. I theorize that this input signals issue validity, severity, or scrutiny, assisting city administrators in prioritizing and responding to requests. Leveraging a…
Priming Self-Reported Partisanship
Can features of surveys, such as question ordering and informational stimuli, affect respondent self-reported partisanship? We report the results of two studies to examine how the survey environment affects the probability that a respondent identifies with a particular party and presidential approval conditional on self-reported partisanship. In an original experiment, we find that, under some circumstances, a question-ordering treatment increase…
Assessing public value failure in government adoption of artificial intelligence
In the context of rising delegation of administrative discretion to advanced technologies, this study aims to quantitatively assess key public values that may be at risk when governments employ automated decision systems (ADS). Drawing on the public value failure framework coupled with experimental methodology, we address the need to measure and compare the salience of three such values—fairness, transparency, and human responsiveness. Based on a…
Counterevidence of crime-reduction effects from federal grants of military equipment to local police
Assessing public value failure in government adoption of artificial intelligence
In the context of rising delegation of administrative discretion to advanced technologies, this study aims to quantitatively assess key public values that may be at risk when governments employ automated decision systems (ADS). Drawing on the public value failure framework coupled with experimental methodology, we address the need to measure and compare the salience of three such values—fairness, transparency, and human responsiveness. Based on a…
Counterevidence of crime-reduction effects from federal grants of military equipment to local police
Institutional factors driving citizen perceptions of AI in government: Evidence from a survey experiment on policing
Law enforcement agencies are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence (AI)‐powered tools. While prior work emphasizes the technological features driving public opinion, we investigate how public trust and support for AI in government vary with the institutional context. We administer a pre‐registered survey experiment to 4200 respondents about AI use cases in policing to measure responsiveness to three key institutional factors: bureaucratic…
Narratives and expert information in agenda‐setting: Experimental evidence on state legislator engagement with artificial intelligence policy
Are narratives as influential in gaining the attention of policymakers as expert information, including for complex, technical policy domains such as artificial intelligence (AI) policy? This pre‐registered study uses a field experiment to evaluate legislator responsiveness to policy entrepreneur outreach. In partnership with a leading AI think tank, we send more than 7300 U.S. state legislative offices emails about AI policy containing an influe…
Priming Self-Reported Partisanship
Can features of surveys, such as question ordering and informational stimuli, affect respondent self-reported partisanship? We report the results of two studies to examine how the survey environment affects the probability that a respondent identifies with a particular party and presidential approval conditional on self-reported partisanship. In an original experiment, we find that, under some circumstances, a question-ordering treatment increase…
The Liar's Dividend: Can Politicians Claim Misinformation to Evade Accountability
This study addresses the phenomenon of misinformation about misinformation, or politicians "crying wolf" over fake news. Strategic and false claims that stories are fake news or deepfakes may benefit politicians by helping them maintain support after a scandal. We posit that this benefit, known as the "liar's dividend," may be achieved through two politician strategies: by invoking informational uncertainty or by encouraging oppositional rallying…
Police reform from the top down: Experimental evidence on police executive support for civilian oversight
The accountability of police to the public is imperative for a functioning democracy. The opinions of police executives—pivotal actors for implementing oversight policies—are an understudied, critical component of successful reform efforts. We use a pre‐registered survey experiment administered to all U.S. municipal police chiefs and county sheriffs to assess whether police executives’ attitudes towards civilian oversight are responsive to 1) sta…
Digital transparency and citizen participation: Evidence from the online crowdsourcing platform of the City of Sacramento
Are Police Racially Biased in the Decision to Shoot
We present a theoretical model predicting that racially biased policing produces (1) more use of potentially lethal force by firearms against Black civilians than against White civilians and (2) lower fatality rates for Black civilians than White civilians. We empirically evaluate this second prediction with original officer-involved shooting data from 2010 to 2017 for eight local police jurisdictions, finding that Black fatality rates are signif…
Public Support for Professional Legislatures
Evidence suggests that well-funded, professional legislatures more effectively provide constituents with their preferred policies and may improve social welfare. Yet, legislative resources across state legislatures have stagnated or dwindled at least in part due to public antagonism toward increasing representatives’ salaries. We argue that one reason voters oppose legislative resources, like salary and staff, is that they are unaware of the pote…
Police Shooting Statistics and Public Support for Police Reforms
Does providing information about police shootings influence policing reform preferences? We conducted an online survey experiment in 2021 among approximately 2,600 residents of 10 large US cities. It incorporated original data we collected on police shootings of civilians. After respondents estimated the number of police shootings in their cities in 2020, we randomized subjects into three treatment groups and a control group. Treatments included …
Hometown Advantage: Voter Preferences for Community Embeddedness in Local Contests
Every year, Americans elect hundreds of thousands of candidates to local public office, typically in low-attention, nonpartisan races. How do voters evaluate candidates in these sorts of elections? Previous research suggests that, absent party cues, voters rely on a set of heuristic shortcuts – including the candidate’s name, profession, and interest group endorsements – to decide whom to support. In this paper, we suggest that community embedded…
Counterevidence of crime-reduction effects from federal grants of military equipment to local police
Assessing public value failure in government adoption of artificial intelligence
In the context of rising delegation of administrative discretion to advanced technologies, this study aims to quantitatively assess key public values that may be at risk when governments employ automated decision systems (ADS). Drawing on the public value failure framework coupled with experimental methodology, we address the need to measure and compare the salience of three such values—fairness, transparency, and human responsiveness. Based on a…
Priming Self-Reported Partisanship
Can features of surveys, such as question ordering and informational stimuli, affect respondent self-reported partisanship? We report the results of two studies to examine how the survey environment affects the probability that a respondent identifies with a particular party and presidential approval conditional on self-reported partisanship. In an original experiment, we find that, under some circumstances, a question-ordering treatment increase…
Police Shooting Statistics and Public Support for Police Reforms
Does providing information about police shootings influence policing reform preferences? We conducted an online survey experiment in 2021 among approximately 2,600 residents of 10 large US cities. It incorporated original data we collected on police shootings of civilians. After respondents estimated the number of police shootings in their cities in 2020, we randomized subjects into three treatment groups and a control group. Treatments included …
Digital transparency and citizen participation: Evidence from the online crowdsourcing platform of the City of Sacramento
Institutional factors driving citizen perceptions of AI in government: Evidence from a survey experiment on policing
Law enforcement agencies are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence (AI)‐powered tools. While prior work emphasizes the technological features driving public opinion, we investigate how public trust and support for AI in government vary with the institutional context. We administer a pre‐registered survey experiment to 4200 respondents about AI use cases in policing to measure responsiveness to three key institutional factors: bureaucratic…
Narratives and expert information in agenda‐setting: Experimental evidence on state legislator engagement with artificial intelligence policy
Are narratives as influential in gaining the attention of policymakers as expert information, including for complex, technical policy domains such as artificial intelligence (AI) policy? This pre‐registered study uses a field experiment to evaluate legislator responsiveness to policy entrepreneur outreach. In partnership with a leading AI think tank, we send more than 7300 U.S. state legislative offices emails about AI policy containing an influe…
Are Police Racially Biased in the Decision to Shoot
We present a theoretical model predicting that racially biased policing produces (1) more use of potentially lethal force by firearms against Black civilians than against White civilians and (2) lower fatality rates for Black civilians than White civilians. We empirically evaluate this second prediction with original officer-involved shooting data from 2010 to 2017 for eight local police jurisdictions, finding that Black fatality rates are signif…
Public Support for Professional Legislatures
Evidence suggests that well-funded, professional legislatures more effectively provide constituents with their preferred policies and may improve social welfare. Yet, legislative resources across state legislatures have stagnated or dwindled at least in part due to public antagonism toward increasing representatives’ salaries. We argue that one reason voters oppose legislative resources, like salary and staff, is that they are unaware of the pote…
Does collective citizen input impact government service provision? Evidence from SeeClickFix requests
Does collective citizen input impact government priorities and performance in service provision? As cities increasingly offer interactive issue reporting options through online platforms and mobile apps, I investigate whether comments and follows on requests drive faster issue resolution. I theorize that this input signals issue validity, severity, or scrutiny, assisting city administrators in prioritizing and responding to requests. Leveraging a…
Speaking of reform: Experimental insights into influencing police executives' perspectives on civilian oversight
Research summary This study investigates how information about public opinion and peer practices influences police executives' views on civilian review boards. We applied structural topic modeling in an experimental paradigm, a novel approach diverging from traditional experimental survey methods, to the open‐ended responses of 1331 police executives collected in an original survey experiment. This technique enables the capture of subtle shifts i…
Police reform from the top down: Experimental evidence on police executive support for civilian oversight
The accountability of police to the public is imperative for a functioning democracy. The opinions of police executives—pivotal actors for implementing oversight policies—are an understudied, critical component of successful reform efforts. We use a pre‐registered survey experiment administered to all U.S. municipal police chiefs and county sheriffs to assess whether police executives’ attitudes towards civilian oversight are responsive to 1) sta…
Hometown Advantage: Voter Preferences for Community Embeddedness in Local Contests
Every year, Americans elect hundreds of thousands of candidates to local public office, typically in low-attention, nonpartisan races. How do voters evaluate candidates in these sorts of elections? Previous research suggests that, absent party cues, voters rely on a set of heuristic shortcuts – including the candidate’s name, profession, and interest group endorsements – to decide whom to support. In this paper, we suggest that community embedded…
Assessing the Impact of Informational Interventions on Perceptions of School Quality
Perceptions of school quality affect many aspects of education policy and politics. Using two randomized survey experiments, we studied the factors that individuals use to evaluate school quality. Our surveys included two novel components: text analysis of open-ended responses and videos highlighting different perspectives on assessing school quality. While we found that individuals respond most strongly to test scores, we also found that a video…
The Liar's Dividend: Can Politicians Claim Misinformation to Evade Accountability
This study addresses the phenomenon of misinformation about misinformation, or politicians "crying wolf" over fake news. Strategic and false claims that stories are fake news or deepfakes may benefit politicians by helping them maintain support after a scandal. We posit that this benefit, known as the "liar's dividend," may be achieved through two politician strategies: by invoking informational uncertainty or by encouraging oppositional rallying…
How New Issues Become Polarized: Partisan Triggers and Subsystem Shopping in Early AI Policymaking
Early AI policymaking in the United States appeared bipartisan, but subsequent developments raise the question of whether AI policy will become more polarized over time. To examine how partisanship takes root around novel policy issues, we perform a mixed‐methods study, analyzing survey data from 129 state legislators in 44 states and performing four case studies featuring legislative debates over enacted AI regulation in Idaho, Colorado, and Ill…
Disagreement driven disengagement? Policymaker perceptions of citizen identity and responsiveness to political communication
Do perceptions of citizen identity affect policymaker responsiveness to different communication channels? This study considers that policymakers prefer to engage through communication channels that are more highly used by their supporters. To investigate this possibility, I field complementary surveys of local policymakers and the US public. I find some evidence that policymakers are more willing to respond when their supporters are seen as more …
Political science (12 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Public relations (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Business (7 works) · Public Administration (7 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (6 works) · Public Administration (6 works)