Month: September 2018

According to a 2018-06-18 "survey roundup" blog post by Karthick Ramakrishnan and Janelle Wong (with a link to the blog post tweeted by Jennifer Lee):

Regardless of the question wording, a majority of Asian American respondents express support for affirmative action, including when it is applied specifically to the context of higher education.

However, a majority of Asian American respondents did not express support for affirmative action in data from the National Asian American Survey 2016 Post-Election Survey [data here, dataset citation: Karthick Ramakrishnan, Jennifer Lee, Taeku Lee, and Janelle Wong. National Asian American Survey (NAAS) 2016 Post-Election Survey. Riverside, CA: National Asian American Survey. 2018-03-03.]

Tables below contain item text from the questionnaire. My analysis sample was limited to participants coded 1 for "Asian American" in the dataset's race variable. The three numeric columns in the tables for each item are respectively for: [1] data that are unweighted; [2] data with the nweightnativity weight applied, described in the dataset as "weighted by race/ethnicity and state, nativity, gender, education (raking method"; and [3] data with the pidadjweight weight applied, described in the dataset as "adjusted for partyID variation by ethnicity in re-interview cooperation rate for". See slides 4 and 14 here for more details on the study methodology.

The table below reports on results for items about opinions of particular racial preferences in hiring and promotion. A majority of Asian American respondents did not support these race-based affirmative action policies:

The next table reports on results for items about opinions of particular uses of race in university admissions decisions. A majority of Asian American respondents did not support these race-based affirmative action policies:

I'm not sure why these post-election data were not included in the 2018-06-18 blog post survey roundup or mentioned in this set of slides. I'm also not sure why the manipulations for the university admissions decisions items include only treatments in which the text suggests that Asian American applicants are advantaged by consideration of race instead of or in addition to including treatments in which the text suggests that Asian American applicants are disadvantaged by consideration of race, which would have been perhaps as or more plausible.

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Notes:

1. Code to reproduce my analyses is here. Including Pacific Islanders and restricting the Asian American sample to U.S. citizens did not produce majority support for any affirmative action item reported on above or for the sex-based affirmative action item (Q7.2).

2. The survey had a sex-based affirmative action item (Q7.2) and had items about whether the participant, a close relative of the participant, or a close personal friend of the participant was advantaged or was disadvantaged by affirmative action (Q7.8 to Q7.11). For the Asian American sample, support for preferential hiring and promotion of women in Q7.2 was at 46% unweighted and at 44% when either weighting variable was applied.

3. This NAAS webpage indicates a 2017-12-05 date for the pre-election survey dataset, and on 2017-12-06 the @naasurvey account tweeted a blurb about these data being available for download. However, that same NAAS webpage lists a 2018-03-03 date for the post-election survey dataset, but I did not see an @naasurvey tweet for that release, and that NAAS webpage did not have a link to the post-election data at least as late as 2018-08-16. I tweeted a question about the availability of the post-election data on 2018-08-31 and then sent in an email and later found the data available at the webpage. I think that this might be the NSF grant for the post-election survey, which indicated that the data were to be publicly released through ICPSR in June 2017.