Take this Quiz: AP US Government — beliefs, participation and elections | Zestly

Question 1

Two siblings raised in the same household hold different political views by their thirties. What does that tell us about political socialisation?

Accepted Answer

That its agents — family, school, peers, the events of one's late adolescence, region, occupation — shape political outlook without determining it, and that people encounter different mixtures of them as their lives diverge

Answer

That socialisation is confined to the events of a person's late adolescence, family playing no part at all

Answer

That socialisation determines political outlook completely, so the siblings must in fact agree and are merely describing their agreement differently

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That socialisation operates only in formal schooling, so anything learned at home has no lasting effect

Question 2

An invented online survey collects fifty thousand responses from readers who chose to click on it. Another invented survey reaches nine hundred people selected at random. Why is the smaller one the more reliable guide to what the population thinks?

Accepted Answer

Because random selection gives every member of the population a known chance of being included, so the sample has no systematic tilt — whereas people who choose to respond differ from those who do not, and adding more of them enlarges the tilt rather than correcting it

Answer

Because those who take the trouble to respond hold more considered views, which makes their answers harder to generalise

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Because a large sample always drives the margin of error to zero, which removes the possibility of meaningful comparison

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Because a margin of error can only be computed for samples under one thousand, so the larger figure cannot be interpreted at all

Question 3

Two invented surveys ask about the same proposal in the same week, one describing it as assistance to families and the other as an increase in public expenditure. They report support twenty points apart. Both were competently conducted. What accounts for the gap?

Accepted Answer

The wording supplies the frame in which respondents think about the proposal, and many people hold no settled view they would report identically whatever they were asked

Answer

The order in which questions are asked has no bearing on answers, so wording cannot be the cause either

Answer

One of them must have miscounted, since honest surveys of the same population at the same time cannot differ by that much

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Neutral wording produces a wider margin of error than loaded wording, which explains the spread

Question 4

American ideological positions are often described along two separate dimensions: what government should do in the economy, and what it should do about personal conduct. Which pairing describes the position usually labelled broadly liberal?

Answer

Restraint by government in the economy and wide latitude in personal conduct alike

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Restraint by government in the economy, together with legal support for traditional norms in personal conduct

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Government direction of the economy together with government regulation of personal conduct

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Government action in the economy to reduce inequality and provide security, together with wide latitude for individuals in matters of personal conduct

Question 5

A voter says she is satisfied with how things have gone over the past four years and will support the incumbent on that basis, without having looked at what either candidate proposes to do next. Which model of voting behaviour best describes her?

Answer

Rational-choice voting, since any deliberate decision counts as one

Answer

Party-line voting, since she is supporting the incumbent's party

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Retrospective voting, since her judgement rests on an assessment of what has already happened rather than on what is promised

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Prospective voting, since she expects the coming four years to resemble the last four