I checked 7 public opinion journals on Sunday, October 25, 2026 using the Crossref API. For the period October 18 to October 24, I found 8 new paper(s) in 6 journal(s).

International Journal of Public Opinion Research

Competing agendas and public attention: zero-sum dynamics between personal and civic domains
Philemon Bantimaroudis, Iasonas Lamprianou
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This study examines influences on public salience of social issues by exploring 2 streams of content described as the “personal domain,” along with a “civic domain” of human activity. To account for these distinctions in media content, we return to the established agenda—setting paradigm and its agenda-melding extension. The central proposition of the study is a zero-sum notion that positions the 2 domains in competition with one another. We expect that as social media users seek entertainment-oriented content of personal nature, their attention toward the civic domain diminishes. While analyzing data from Cyprus, we conclude that there is evidence of a zero-sum influence primarily for unobtrusive issues, with a political orientation. A similar finding does not apply for obtrusive issues.

Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties

Affective polarization and support for democratic principles in Israel
Shingo Hamanaka
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Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology

Structural Bias in Stylized Items with Point-Valued Categories
Ettore Scappini
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Survey research frequently relies on stylized questions with discrete, ordered response categories to measure behaviors or attitudes. While these items simplify responses and facilitate standardization, they introduce a structural bias component (SBC) arising from the discrepancy between actual behavior and the assigned category values. This paper investigates SBC in the context of religious practice, using data from the European Values Study across multiple waves and countries. The analysis shows that the discrete nature of point-value items can generate distortions. A calibration model is proposed to estimate and adjust for this bias, assuming a uniform distribution of behaviors within each interval. Findings suggest that, while SBC can reach substantial levels in some domains—particularly where the accuracy of absolute values is crucial—in practice, however, its impact on theoretical interpretations or explanatory factors is typically limited. The study underscores the importance of carefully designing response categories and considering alternative scaling methods, such as stylized items with interval-valued categories, to reduce measurement error and enhance survey validity.
Small Area Estimation Using Area-Level Linked Data
Enrico Fabrizi, Nicola Salvati, Ray Chambers
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Official statistics increasingly use linked survey and administrative data for small area estimation, but record linkage error can distort direct estimators in area-level Fay–Herriot models. We develop a likelihood-based framework for such models under an Exchangeable Linkage Error mechanism, using the Missing Information Principle to obtain linkage error-adjusted maximum likelihood estimators of regression coefficients and variance components, an empirical best predictor of true area means, and a mean squared error estimator. Simulation results show that ignoring linkage error leads to substantial bias and loss of efficiency, while the proposed methods restore unbiasedness and provide accurate uncertainty quantification. An application to estimation of average equivalized income for 113 labor market areas in Central Italy, based on European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data linked to administrative registers, illustrates the practical benefits of the approach.

Politics, Groups, and Identities

Group discrimination and personal experiences: how racialized identities shape political trust
Susan Banducci, Laszlo Horvath, Daniel Stevens
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Public Opinion Quarterly

Attitudes Toward LGB and TGD Rights in Latin America
Oscar Castorena, Eli G Rau, Valerie Schweizer-Robinson, Elizabeth J Zechmeister
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Research on attitudes toward transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) individuals lags behind research on opinion on the lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) population, leaving open questions about public opinion on these two LGBTQ+ subgroups, in general and in particular in the Global South. While a sizeable gap exists in US public opinion toward TGD and LGB rights, we do not know whether that finding is generalizable to other contexts. With a focus on Latin America, we draw on a range of scholarship to identify factors that could result in a similar divergence of attitudes toward these subgroups or, instead, relative convergence. Our analyses focus primarily on novel survey data from representative surveys across thirteen Latin American countries. Our results demonstrate a fair amount of convergence in mean levels, item nonresponse rates, and predictors of views on LGB versus TGD rights. We present some notable differences across countries and issues, with results for the former (countries) varying by socio-political context and the latter (issues) varying across political and nonpolitical domains. We identify these patterns as constituting a future agenda for researchers of opinion on LGBTQ+ topics. We conclude that, in the contemporary period, the Latin American public holds fairly similar mental schemas toward LGB and TGD groups.
How the Public Makes Sense of Gender Politics: Textual, Emotional, and Symbolic Dimensions
Marta Fraile, Nerea Gándara-Guerra, Paula Zuluaga-Borrero
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How do ordinary citizens make sense of gender politics? While research has examined public support for feminism and gender equality either separately or as interchangeable concepts, far less is known about the meanings citizens attach to these labels and whether they evoke distinct political meanings. This article compares the textual, emotional, and symbolic associations of three related but distinct framings of gender politics: feminism, gender equality, and equality between men and women. Drawing on an original pre-registered survey experiment in Spain, respondents were randomly assigned to define and evaluate one of the three labels, allowing us to analyze their meanings across textual, emotional, and visual dimensions. We find that while most respondents express sympathy toward all three labels, feminism stands as the most contested. Feminism also has the sharpest sociopolitical profile, eliciting greater support from young, highly educated, progressive women. Text analyses reveal that the public frames feminism in terms of collective action, conflict, and women’s identity, drawing heavily on political language, while the other two labels emphasize policy and material concerns. Emotionally, gender politics elicits more positive than negative responses across all three labels, though men report slightly higher negative emotions toward feminism. Feminism is also the only label consistently associated with images of women’s mobilization and protest, reinforcing its distinctively political resonance. These findings show that feminism and gender equality tap related but meaningfully distinct constructs in the public mind, with implications for how scholars measure attitudes toward gender politics and interpret public support for equality-related policies.

Social Science Computer Review

Surveillance Path Dependence: Technological and Institutional Lock-In of Digital Surveillance Infrastructures in China
Jingyang Huang, Jack Linzhou Xing
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Digital surveillance infrastructures are widely critiqued for their use-side problems of access, privacy, and discrimination, but meaningful intervention requires understanding how these infrastructures are developed and stabilized in the first place. This paper examines China’s health code systems (HCSs) as a revelatory case of path dependence in the development of digital surveillance infrastructures. Drawing on news, first-hand interviews, and fieldwork, we trace how local governments chose to embed contact-tracing systems within the pre-existing digital ecosystems of Alipay and WeChat, primarily at the local level. Such choices persisted despite the central government’s openly cautious stance toward private tech giants and its subsequent attempts to develop independent alternatives. We describe this trajectory as surveillance path dependence, in which the convergence of pre-existing technological foundations, tight temporal pressure, and institutional incentives within a fragmented authoritarian institutional context locked new applications into established digital surveillance paths. This study suggests that mitigating the adverse societal impacts of large-scale digital surveillance requires intervening directly in the foundational design and institutional deployment of digital ecosystems rather than at the level of use-side effects.