Andrew Gelman links a paper by Christian Grose and Carrie Russell I am discussant for at SPSA in three weeks. (Incidentally, it’s the only paper for the panel I’ve received so far—but since I’m not exactly on-schedule with my paper, I can’t really throw many stones about it.)

The paper looks at the effect of being required to vote publicly (for example, in a caucus setting) on voters’ willingness to participate based on a novel experiment conducted during the 2008 Iowa Democratic caucuses. Their research may be some implications for the current debate over card check, although what those implications might be I leave to others, at least until SPSA.

Not only do I have a published article in Ukrainian (or possibly Russian), I’m cited in Czech. Would that I had such academic prestige in North America.

My current draft of my graduate political behavior seminar syllabus. There are a few holes here and there—and I know it’s probably closer to a senior seminar-level syllabus at a more selective institution—but I’m confident I can refine it a bit in the next few weeks while I tackle the easier syllabi.

Please use only a green Scantron form and #2 pencil to complete this exam. Answers circled on this exam paper will not be graded.

1. A professor says an assignment is due on Tuesday at 8 p.m. Which of the following statements is true? (Circle only one.)

a. I can turn in the assignment on Wednesday at 8 a.m. without penalty.
b. I can turn in the assignment prior to Tuesday at 8 p.m. without penalty.
c. I must turn in the assignment at precisely 8 p.m. Tuesday—synchronize watches!
d. Your professor is likely to be in his/her office at 8 p.m. Tuesday.

2. Your professor, Louise Johnson, is apparently a single female. Which of the following is a proper form of address for her, absent specific instructions to the contrary? (Circle as many as appropriate.)

a. Mrs. Johnson
b. Miss Johnson
c. Dr. Johnson
d. Prof. Johnson
e. Louise
f. Hot Lips

3. Your professor has given instructions that an assignment must be turned in both in electronic form at TurnItIn.com and on paper. How should you respond? (Circle the appropriate answer.)

a. I will turn in an electronic copy at TurnItIn.com and a paper copy at the professor’s office.
b. I will make up some excuse about being “out of printing credits” and only turn in an electronic copy.
c. I will copy-and-paste my paper from a Wikipedia article on a completely unrelated topic and only turn in a paper copy.
d. I will turn in neither; instead, I will complete a Universal Grade Change form as found at “Kids Prefer Cheese,” a popular Internet weblog.

4. A professor gives an examination in which s/he requires the use of a green Scantron form and a #2 pencil. I should

a. bring some obscure type of pencil only marketed in Mongolia and a pink Scantron form purchased at a university in the Ivory Coast.
b. bring a #2 pencil and a green Scantron form to the exam.
c. complete the exam using a pen, because there’s no way the machine knows the difference between pencil and pen even though one is reflective and the other isn’t.
d. come to class late and disrupt other students by asking if anyone has a green Scantron form they’d like to give me.

Extra Credit: My class meets MWF 8-8:50 a.m. My final exam is Friday from 8–11 a.m. Finals week starts Monday. I should

a. go to class Monday and Wednesday even though there are likely other final exams scheduled in that room at the same time.
b. email the professor Thursday night letting him know that I have three final exams scheduled for Friday and I’d like to reschedule my exam for some other time.
c. not attend the final exam because my high school exempts students from taking finals if they have an “A” in the course (never mind that I currently have a 76, but don’t know that because I can’t be bothered to check the online gradebook).
d. study.
e. none of the above.

Public opinion, voting behavior, parties, and interest groups all shoved together in one unholy syllabus. And the best part is that I couldn’t even figure out how to cram in two books I’ve already ordered, which no doubt will annoy the bookstore to no end.

The rumor board gets a thread on dealing with non-academics who don’t get the academic job market. Now if we just had a thread for academics who don’t get the nature of the market, we’d be set.

Day two of the TAMIU plagiarism saga hits Inside Higher Ed with such pearls of wisdom from the (now terminated) instructor who apparently instigated the controversy.

At least now I know why we all suddenly had to complete a training module on FERPA last week, although in fairness it was the only required training module thus far that actually seemed minimally relevant to my job.

Without wading into the specifics of the case at hand (all I know is what is printed in the local paper), I will say that I have no problem in principle with the idea that students ought to be entitled to due process regarding charges of academic dishonesty, just as they are entitled to due process in the determination of their grades in other circumstances, provided that those entrusted with the duty of reviewing these charges take violations seriously and operate with the presumption that the burden of proof in a grade dispute is on the student rather than the faculty member.

So I assume the usual suspects at APSA will now be calling for a boycott of all future meetings in California.

The sad thing is that I agree with the boycott ringleaders on policy but it’s hard to take their specious arguments against the 2012 New Orleans meeting as being motivated by anything other than uninformed or outdated stereotypes of how New Orleanians would behave, as if there are absolutely no gay and lesbian couples in New Orleans today who have successfully dealt with the lack of a legal right to have their relationship with their life partners legitimized by the state. If, as a social scientist, you want other social scientists who aren’t fully committed to your personal crusades to take your public policy arguments seriously, you need to present at least some sort of data in support of your arguments.

I’ve been remiss in pointing my readers recently to Zachary Schrag’s Institutional Review Blog, which patiently documents the overreach and misapplication of federal regulations regarding the protection of human subjects to the social and behavioral sciences, including research that by federal regulation is exempt from review by IRBs.

While Schrag is cautiously optimistic that the new head of the Office of Human Research Protections will be an improvement, the continued domination of the process at most levels by biomedical researchers—along with the general sense that, as Schrag notes, “researchers cannot be trusted to apply the exemptions themselves”—is still troubling to those of us who want to conduct human subjects research, particularly secondary data analysis. Technically speaking (even though I dare say most social scientists observe this requirement in the breach), even the analysis of secondary data collected by others and fully anonymized before we see it (e.g. use of data such as the General Social Survey, American National Election Studies series, the Eurobarometer series, etc.) requires IRB oversight and approval beforehand.

It occurred to me this morning, as I was pondering our forthcoming ads for two political science positions and a conversation I had yesterday with some other social scientists, that had I accepted either of the tenure-track jobs I was offered before coming to TAMIU, I’d never have even applied for this job even though on most dimensions, at least in my personal judgment, it’s a better position than either of those were/are.

I’m not really sure what this all means, but I figured letting my readers engage in something a step above dream analysis might be more interesting than not posting anything today.

IHE today has an article on whether or not faculty should give their students Election Day off to go vote. While I’d certainly excuse a student who was working as an election clerk all day, given the ample opportunity for early and absentee voting here I really don’t think I could justify a blanket election day holiday for all students in my courses.

Our book orders were due ridiculously early, so I didn’t slip in everything I probably should have added from my “to be read” list, but at least I got in The American Voter Revisited, The End of Inequality, and Partisan Hearts and Minds between my graduate political behavior course and the senior-level course I’m using to shoehorn political behavior, parties, and interest groups into our (radically in need of some overhaul) undergraduate major.

Now I have to make up some fake syllabi for two courses I’m unlikely to ever teach—but since I put in the proposals for our new graduate methods sequence, writing the syllabi for the curriculum committee is my job even though I’ve deferred to a PA person and a sociologist to teach the sequence regularly (which lets me focus on undergrad methods, which the PA person doesn’t want to teach and which I’d rather teach than the graduate sequence).

A commenter at InsideHigherEd suggests a new system for ranking colleges:

One index of quality might be a compilation where college professors send their own children to college. These parents know what goes on inside a campus that affects students.

College instructors are the last people who would rely on U.S. News for information in where to send their own children. The high prestige universities are great places to get a graduate degree, but professors often see that the best undergraduate education lies elsewhere.

Of course, professors also know that at least in academic hiring (probably to a greater extent than most areas, except medicine and law), institutional prestige is a major factor in the decisionmaking process, so they may emphasize prestige more than is warranted. But the general principle is sound: be wary of an institution that a professor wouldn’t send their own kids to.

Via Ars Technica, yet another social networking site, this time for academics with extensive support for classifying yourself down to the most microscopic of subfields. So far it seems a little less sterile than LinkedIn, which is probably a good thing.

My profile is here, if you haven’t been blasted by an invite from me already.

I’m all for responsiveness to reasonable student feedback but this student complaint seems somewhat beyond the pale.

A few bits and pieces I’ve learned or been told over the years:

• Create a word processor file each year. As you do things that need to go in your annual report (here it’s called PP&E), put things in it, so when you write the actual report you don’t have to remember what you were doing last September.
• Type up all your lecture notes and save them on your computer and as many thumb drives as you can find. If you already have handwritten notes, either scan them in and archive, or type them up. You never know when you’ll have to teach that “one time only” class again.
• “Face time” counts. Even though you will probably be at your least productive 8–5 weekdays in your office, being present and visible at least some of that time is a good thing. Also, try to get an office were your presence is difficult to overlook, even if you would rather hide in the corner suite.

Update: Another helpful hint from Michelle: “solicit advice and guidance from both junior and senior colleagues (they often like to give it and it will give you insights into dept politics, issues, and what they really care about for tenure).”

I learned today that two events for two subjects i I previously thought happened at time t_i actually happened at time t_i-3 (where time is measured in years). Suddenly my internal calendar seems way too leisurely.

IHE reports on an APSA panel debate over whether the American politics field has outlived its usefulness. I generally (but mildly) agree with the proposition, but then again I’m one of the relatively few “Americanists” who would self-identify as a behaviorist/applied methodologist with a dash of neo-institutionalism, primarily interested in the politics of North America and Western Europe.

A (regrettably final) update for those of you interested in the Arthur Miller saga: a correspondent emails that Miller’s body has been discovered and that campus authorities have ended their investigation into his alleged indiscretions. My sympathies go out to Miller’s family and his current and former students.

Jacob Levy reports on efforts by some conservative APSA members to organize a boycott of the 2009 APSA Annual Meeting, to be held in Toronto, Canada, not-very-proud home of Human Rights Commission Kangaroo Courts ‘R’ Us.

I, as always, support all boycotts of APSA in body, although not in spirit—in spirit, I agree with Jacob that this boycott is at least as dumb as “NO-LA 2012.”

Iowa political science professor Arthur Miller,* recently accused of attempting to trade students sexual favors for grades, has apparently gone missing with his family fearing the he has taken his own life (I got the link via the rumor mills). While I had a little fun with the case here earlier this week, and think Miller’s conduct was reprehensible assuming the allegations are true, nonetheless it’s hard not to feel at least some sympathy for him and particularly his family, even if the horrible situation Miller was in professionally was entirely self-inflicted.

* Whom I do not know personally, although I did cite a short essay he wrote on schema theory in my dissertation.

I preface all of this by saying this is nothing personal against the HR folks here, who were actually quite pleasant today; I just feel the need to rage against the machine.

My day began way too early with a 22-year-old video with the production values of a small-market cable TV ad detailing the fun and excitement of the Texas Hazard Communication Act, which explained that huffing paint fumes and drinking benzene for the next 30 years probably wouldn’t be smart. Later on I spent waaay too much time doing five separate training modules online on things that either would be blindingly obvious to someone with a postgraduate degree or wouldn’t be so obvious if I hadn’t been already subjected to training in such matters at all of my previous employers as well. All of the training, needless to say, was presented in such a way that none of the examples were actually relevant to the work situation that professors find themselves in—instead of “don’t take bribes from the textbook companies” and “don’t fondle your students in exchange for grades,” it was “don’t use the on-campus physical plant facilities to fix your buddies’ cars.”

Also needless to say, none of these training modules included the only one that would be useful—namely the one I have to do to get IRB approval to sneeze in the direction of data collected from people I’ll never meet, because without the training I’d apparently be the first political scientist in history capable of abusing human subjects backwards through time.

And to top things off I think the thunderstorms killed my the state’s computer over the weekend.

Orin Kerr on boycotting-but-attending academic conferences:

Whoever thought up a boycott that requires you to be in San Diego in January but forbids you to attend the panels has a keen sense of how to appeal to the academic mind.

Like this is some sort of innovation. By this standard, I’ve been boycotting conferences (at least the panels I’m not supposed to be participating in) for years.

My OTB colleague James Joyner links a post by Dean Dad on graduate school placement statistics, noting that the key question is “how would you define ‘success’ for a doctoral program?”

I think this is, at some level, a relative question; the “expected placement” for various programs differs wildly and the bandwidth of that expectation also varies, often between specialties. In American politics, at least, supply and demand are pretty well balanced; my “travails” on the market probably have had more to do with my personality as an interviewee and my pickiness when it comes to job opportunities than a placement issue. On the other hand, if I defined success not as “a tenure-track job” but “a tenure-track job in a doctoral program”—which is how many of the faculty and graduate students I’ve interacted with over the years at ICPSR and EITM have defined it—my career is destined to be a failure, since I have no real interest in such a job except as a means to obtaining another job (I suppose now is as good a time as any to offer my apologies to those PhD-granting departments I applied to under semi-false pretenses).

Those who are skeptical that any single, useful, standardized measure of placement can be adopted are probably right, although there are some surveys available that get at the basics, and I think this answer gets to the crux of the situation for the potential student:

Programs with a good placement record will keep track of placements and brag about them.

If you can't get a straight answer from a department/program, THE REAL ANSWER SUCKS.