TY - JOUR
AU - KRYSAN, MARIA
AB - AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND THE PUBLIC, 1970-1995 CHARLOTTE STEEH MARIA KRYSAN In the current policy debate over affirmative action, many prominent governmental leaders have taken for granted the mass public's staunch and stable opposition to race-conscious programs. In contrast, social scientists have noted the fluidity of measured opinion toward affirma- tive action, stressing the influence of question wording on survey re- sponses (Sigelman and Welch 1991). These differences suggest that opinion about affirmative action is very complex and influenced by a multitude of different factors (see, e.g., Moore 1995; Norman 1995). Despite the fact that on the surface survey results often appear contra- dictory, they are surprisingly consistent once we consider the mass public's level of knowledge about affirmative action issues and the terms used to discuss them in survey questions. In addition, several cross-cutting dimensions influence answers to items about affirmative action, and, when these dimensions are taken into account, responses become much more interpretable than they may first appear. The struc- ture of public attitudes clearly defines acceptable policy as falling somewhere between color blindness on the one hand and preferences on the other. The first obstacle to studying affirmative action attitudes over time is the spottiness of 
TI - THE POLLS—TRENDS
JO - Public Opinion Quarterly
DO - 10.1086/297742
DA - 1996-01-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-polls-trends-uPLP0a3lw6
SP - 128
EP - 158
VL - 60
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -