Research
Research
My dissertation examines how people’s understanding of their power and place within the political system is shaped by the institutions, laws, and political norms they encounter in their lives. My work gives special attention to how systems of voting and representation impact political efficacy, especially at early stages of political life and among people whose rights to vote and to have equal representation are most challenged. As a measure of the belief in one's own ability to participate effectively in and make a difference in politics, political efficacy is typically used as a predictor variable indicative of the health and stability of democratic systems. However, I focus on how those systems influence an individual’s sense of political efficacy in the first place. What messages are people internalizing from their interactions with and understandings of political institutions and how does that relate to their sense of power and engagement with the political system? My dissertation addresses this question with a variety of methods across three papers.
“Fulfilling the Role: How Legislator Activities Shape Constituents’ Political Efficacy and Perceptions of Good Representation”
“Deciding Where to Vote: Implications for College Students’ Political Efficacy”
“Beyond Turnout: Voting Restrictions and Black Political Efficacy”
Safarpour, Alauna, Kristin Lunz Trujillo, Jon Green, Caroline High Pippert, Jennifer Lin, and James N Druckman. “Divisive or Descriptive?: How Americans Understand Critical Race Theory.” The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics 9, no. 1 (2024): 157–81. https://doi.org/10.1017/rep.2023.39.
As part of The COVID States Project, I co-authored several reports on COVID-19 vaccination in children focused on parental concerns about the vaccine (reports #61, #68, and #74), intentions to vaccinate and vaccine uptake (report #71), and parental information sources about the vaccines (report #87). The ability to track trends with long-term data collection allowed us to respond to an evolving public health situation in real-time with information valuable to the public and government sources. These and other reports from the project have been cited by newspaper, radio, and television news reports.