Like Mother, Like Daughter: Intergenerational Transmission of DK Response Rates

Attitude expression (and its opposite, DK response rate) is an important personal and political characteristic which is related to an individual's psychological and demographic traits. It is also transmitted from parent to child. In fact, it is transmitted to a greater degree than other political attitudes examined here, with the exception of partisanship. Owing to the fact that males show higher levels of attitude expression, and because this tendency is reinforced by cultural norms, the transmission process for attitude expression is conditioned by the sex of child and of parent. Compared with the father's impact, mothers are particularly influential in transmitting attitude expression to daughters. While fathers have a somewhat stronger effect on sons than do mothers, the difference is substantially smaller. Ronald B. Rapoport is an Associate Professor of Government, College of William and Mary. The data for this study were made available by the Inter-University Consortium for Social and Political Research. Neither the Consortium nor the original collectors of the data are responsible for the analyses or interpretations presented here. The author would like to acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of Don Alexander, David Finifter, Fritz Gaenslen, Will Hausman, Eric Jensen, and the anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of this paper. Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 49:198-208 ? by the Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc 0033-362X/85/0049-198/$2.50 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.112 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 04:26:40 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER 199 Although survey methods and question wording may retard or encourage DK responses, individual level variables show consistent relationships with DK response rates. The more educated the respondent, for example, the less likely to give DK responses. This finding is supported throughout the variety of question wording/filter experiments on issue questions, conducted by Schuman and Presser (1981) and Bishop et al. (1980).2 It is reinforced, as well, by data from Gallup and Harris surveys. Using all Gallup questions between 1969 and 1971, and all 1970 Harris questions, Schuman and Presser (1981:145) found that only "14 percent of . .. 312 . . . items do not-show a significant or noticeable DKeducation association. " In addition to education, other demographic factors such as age, sex, race, and income also have consistent and significant effects on DK response rates (Francis and Busch, 1975). But it is not just demographic factors alone which relate to DK responses. Researchers find that psychological variables such as political involvement (Francis and Busch, 1975) and knowledge and generalized opinion strength (Schuman and Presser, 1981) are actually more important in predicting DK rates, when both they and demographic variables are used concurrently as predictors. The consistency of these findings across questions of very different formats implies a strong individual level trait, that of opinionation (attitude expression). Further support for the importance of opinionation is provided by the facts that DK rates have been found to be extremely stable over time, in comparison with other political attitudes, and to relate quite strongly to other forms of political activity, such as trying to persuade others how to vote (Rapoport, 1982). In addition, it is almost unique among survey items in that it is a behavior that is observed directly in the survey situation. Opinionation is not the same thing as attitude holding. One can hold an attitude without being willing to express it to friends or survey researchers. Similarly, we cannot distinguish between individuals with well-thoughtout and stable attitudes and those who randomly pick a response category in order to appear knowledgeable. For this paper, opinionation is the more important variable. While attitude holding, alone, may affect one's own voting behavior or political participation, expressing attitudes reinforces and strengthens one's own attitudes, and can also influence the attitudes and behaviors of others. But where does this orientation or trait come from? Most past research has focused on proximate determinants of DK response rates: education, age, political interest, etc. (see Converse, 1976-77; Francis and Busch, 2 The single exception to this finding for both studies consisted of the made-up or unknown issues on which the more educated were more willing to admit to ignorance. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.112 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 04:26:40 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 200 RONALD B. RAPOPORT 1975; and Ferber, 1966, for a sampling). Here, we look instead at the role of parental socialization. This makes sense since expressing attitudes is one of the very first political activities widely open to pre-adults, and a parental activity that a child cannot avoid observing. Is opinionation transmitted from parent to child, like some other attitudes, or is it transmitted through broader societal or peer socialization? Parent-child transmission rates for traits and attitudes are extremely variable. In the only study including a U.S. national sample of youths (high school seniors) and their parents, Jennings and Niemi (1974) found a range in parent-child correlations (tau-b), from .47 for party identification, and .59 for 1964 presidential candidate support, down to .08 on attitudes toward big business and on allowing speeches against churches. The highest correlations were found on those attitudes which were most salient to the parents, most observable by the children, and concerning concrete rather than abstract political objects. Partisanship and candidate preference, for example, are easily and accurately perceived by the child, and frequently reinforced by the parent. They are cognitively simple attitudes, concerned with frequently encountered symbols. Similarly, the process through which voting turnout and other forms of activity are transmitted and reinforced is fairly clear, and the moderately high level of transmission (Tb's = .16 .27) is understandable (Jennings and Niemi, 1981:88). More general political orientations like political efficacy, cosmopolitanism, and political trust, however, show substantially lower levels of transmission (between .11 and .12), as reported by Jennings and Niemi (1974). This may be due to the greater integrative cognitive demands that transmission of these concepts puts on the child, both in terms of the diffuseness of parental cues and the complexity of these attitudes. The child must be able to recognize a variety of loosely related actions and statements as being related to one another and as comprising a unified attitude. But general orientations are important just because they are more abstract and less dependent on any particular issue. In terms of transmission, we should not expect opinionation to be consciously reinforced in the same way as candidate preference or party identification, simply because it is difficult for the child to separate its form (i.e., to express or not to express attitudes in general) from its content (i. e., pro or con on specific attitudes). From a social learning perspective, we should expect that the child will have repeated exposure to a particular behavior of a valued-model (i. e., parental opinionation or attitude uncertainty), and that this should produce imitation at reasonably high levels (Bandura, 1971; Cundy, 1979). We should expect, then, significant levels of transmission, but levels below those for particularly salient specific attitude objects, like party and candidate choice where not This content downloaded from 157.55.39.112 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 04:26:40 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER 201 only modeling but purposive reinforcement is likely to occur, and where the attitude being transmitted is so clear.3