Research+Data

Advocacy and Health Politics

  • “Buying Indifference, Selling Permission: A Formal Model of Mental Health Advocacy” (coauthored with Lynn M. Sanders) will be presented at the 2013 APSA conference.
  • “Rights, Responsibilities, and the Ideology of Mental Health” (coauthored with Lynn M. Sanders and Nicole Pankiewicz) was presented at the 2011 APSA conference, and is in progress.

My work on the politics of mental health focuses on both advocacy and public opinion. Using survey data, I describe the political attitudes of citizens in the realm of mental health service provision, arguing that opinions about mental health spending and government responsibility are driven by attitudes about forced treatment.

 Survey Methodology

  • “Beyond Predictive Accuracy: Evaluating Polls Throughout the 2012 Campaign” (coauthored with Jee-Kwang Park) is a working paper currently under review.
  • “Structured Response: How Visual Style Influences Online Survey Respondents” was presented at MPSA 2013 and is currently under review.
  • “Strategic Survey Inflation” was submitted as a Masters Thesis at the University of Virginia. The draft is available upon request.

My work on survey research and public opinion focuses on the meaning of survey responses – both as predictive tools and articulated opinions.

Accreditation and Public Administration

  • “Socializer or Signal: How Agency Accreditation Affects Organizational Culture” (coauthored with Manny Teodoro) was published in Public Administration Review and is available here (gated).
  • “Assessing Professionalism: Street-Level Attitudes and Agency Accreditation” (coauthored with Manny Teodoro) was published in State and Local Government Review and is available here (gated).
  • Replication materials are available here.

My work on agency accreditation targets the relationship between accreditation as administrative platform and the attitudes of those who work in the agency. Accreditation is an increasingly popular administrative strategy, with programs in police, fire, parks and recreation departments, as well as libraries and prisons. I investigate whether accreditation increases agency professionalism among rank and file members of an agency via surveys.