VOLUME 2, ISSUE 4, 2007 <Previous Next> The Exaggerated Effects of Advertising on Turnout: The Dangers of Self-Reports Lynn Vavreck SUGGESTED CITATION: Lynn Vavreck (2007) "The Exaggerated Effects of Advertising on Turnout: The Dangers of Self-Reports", Quarterly Journal of Political Science: Vol. 2:No 4, pp 325-343. http:/dx.doi.org/10.1561/100.00006005 Download this article Associated files: Replication Data Tell a Colleague Get Acrobat Reader Printing Tip: Select the option to 'print as image' in the Acrobat print dialog to ensure the article prints as it appears on screen. Learn more... Political Scientists routinely rely on self-reports when investigating the effects of political stimuli on behavior. An example of this is found in the American politics work addressing whether campaign advertising mobilizes voters. Findings appear to vary by methodology and are based on varying degrees of self-reports; yet, little attention is paid to the furtive complications that arise when self-reports are used as both dependent and independent variables. In this paper, I demonstrate and attempt to account for the correlated yet unobservable errors that drive self-reports of advertising exposure and political behavior. The results are from a randomized survey experiment involving approximately 1500 respondents. Before the 2002 elections, I showed a professionally developed, non-partisan, get-out-the-vote advertisement to a random subset of a randomly drawn national sample via televisions in their own homes. The analysis shows a great divide between the true effect (using assigned treatment and validated vote) and results using respondent recall of these activities.

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