32 questions and answers, we have presented the percentage of students with the correct answer at the first testing. 1. Which political party has a majority in the legislature? (Democrats) 41%. 2. 3. 4. What is the name of the man who is the President of the State Senate? (Horne) 8%. In general, what does the legislature do when it meets each year at the Capitol? (votes on bills, makes laws, brings up new laws, discusses laws, bills are proposed) 52%. What is the name of the man who was elected from your district in the Florida House of Representatives? (Tucker or Webb) 12%. 5. Which house of the legislature has the most members? (House of 6. 7. 8. 9. What is the name of one important committee in the State Legislature? (any of 27 House/Senate committees) 8%. What do the legislators do at committee meetings? (write up bills, read and discuss bills, decide whether bill should go to House/ Senate) 25%. When the legislature meets in Tallahassee each year, how long does What do you think are the most important issues facing Florida this The range of possible scores was 0-10, by summing all correct responses. The average inter-item correlation was +.19 and the Time 1-Time 2 correlation was +.67. At Time 1, the distribution of responses was: 33 Knowledge about current legislative activities. At the second wave of testing, nine factual items were introduced to determine the level of awareness as to what was currently happening in the legislature, with specific bills, committees, etc. The full set of items appears below. For the first two, a correct answer was coded as 1, for the other seven, a correct answer was coded as 2, and the response, "I'm not sure," was coded as 1. All incorrect responses were coded 0. Responses were all provided in a multiple choice listing. The correct answers are indicated parenthetically, and the mean score per item is entered. 1. Who is trying to get more control over protecting consumers in 2. The legislature discussed an equal rights amendment. What does it 3. 4. 5. 6. The legislature did not give 18-year-olds the right to drink in this session. (false) 1.62. A bill dealing with throwaway bottles and cans was introduced into In states which have banned pop-top cans, has it hurt sales of What does a Sunshine law do? (opens up government meetings).65. 7. Is Florida one of the first few states to give 18-year-olds full rights? (no) .98. 8. 9. When Florida voted 2 years ago on giving 18-year-olds full rights, what happened? (most people were against it) 1.44. What has been the most controversial part of the law to give 18year-olds full rights? (that they can drink) 1.35. By summing all scores to individual items, the range of possible scores was 0-16. The average inter-item correlation was +.09. For this composite index, the actual distribution across all respondents at Time 2 was: Knowledge about legislative structure. At the second wave of testing, 12 items were used to determine the respondent's level of understanding of how the Florida legislature works. The questions do not deal with specific pieces of legislation, but with the manner by which bills are dealt with, the importance or lack of it of certain legislative activities, and the role of the executive branch. Again, multiple choice categories were used, responses were scored as correct (2), partly correct (1), or incorrect (0). This was the scoring method for all items, save the last one in the list below. Maximally correct responses are indicated parenthetically, and the item means are entered. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. How many bills does the legislature deal with in a session? (more than 100) .9%. Some legislators have a Populist philosophy. Does this mean they vote...(what they think the people want them to vote) 1.31. When people make amendments to bills, are they generally in favor or generally against the bill? (it depends) 1.22. What is the number of people who report on the legislature for How important are committee hearings? (very or somewhat important) 1.78. How important is the committee on rules and calendars? (very or somewhat important) 1.49. 35 7. Which branch of government has the most to say about making laws in Florida? (the legislative branch) 1.31. 8. Can a bill in Florida become law if the Governor does not sign 9. When a Senator makes a speech on the floor of the Senate, how much of the time do other Senators usually pay attention to him? (some of the time) 1.06. 10. When the legislators vote on a bill, how do they cast their votes? (push button on voting machine) 1.35. 11. When the legislators are working, do they act serious or humorous? (sometimes serious and sometimes humorous) 1.32. 12. Can you give me the name of one U.S. Senator from Florida? (Gurney or Chiles) .24. By summing all scores to individual items, the range of possible scores was 0-23. The average inter-item correlation was +.17. The frequency distribution for this index, across all respondents at Time 2 was: The validity of these knowledge indices can be assessed with an analysis of the intercorrelations among the three measures at Time 2. The basic political knowledge index was correlated +.54 with the current activities index and +.35 with the structural knowledge index. The indices of structural and activities knowledge were correlated +.51. Control Variables To establish the comparability of the experimental and control groups used in this experiment, as well as to isolate other factors which might 36 contribute to observed differences, certain additional information was obtained during the first testing wave. This information represented four variable areas: 1. General media behaviors. Respondents were asked how much general television watching and how much general newspaper reading they did. Their viewing of Channel 11 was also as certained. 2. Interest in presidential politics. We determined the degree of the respondents interest in the prior year's presidential campaign, and whether they had done any thing to help one of the candidates. 3. Awareness of the series "Today In The Legislature." Respondents were asked whether they knew anything about a new series of shows on the legislature, whether they planned to watch any of them, and how often they thought their parents would watch the series. 4. erence, grades. Demography. Characteristics identified were political party pref father's occupation, sex, race, and a self-report of scholastic So the reader may know something about the comparability of the experimental and control groups on these characteristics, we shall indicate here what kinds of differences were obtained: 1. In terms of general media behaviors, there were no significant differences between experimental and control subjects on any of the variables. 2. There were no differences between the groups in terms of interest in presidential politics. 3. As to awareness of the series, both groups were equally aware at Time 1, and there was no significant difference in the anticipated viewing of their parents. However, in terms of the respondents' own anticipated |