Gender Differences
Today, 32 out of 132 superintendents in Alabama are female,
and 18 legislators are female out of a total of 140 legislators
in the state. Women now have an established presence in an
arena traditionally dominated by men. Many believe that
women will focus their time and efforts on policy development issues that are more important to women as a group,
which will change the way these issues are conceptualized,
debated and legislated to produce substantive policy outcomes that serve women better than similar outcomes
designed by men (Thomas, 1994).
Numerous studies of women legislators find that they
focus on issues that follow from their status as women and
their socialization as part of this distinct group.
Sanbonmatsu
(2002) found that female legislators have defined distinct
positions nationally as they relate to reproductive rights.
Tolbert and Steuernagel (2001) noted that female legislators
have shaped national policy on health care issues as they
relate to all women and children. Both studies validate that
the overarching allegiance to and support of the effects of
policy development occur with all women, in general, rather
than a party allegiance to Democrats or Republicans.
Other issues that women have successfully influenced
involve their traditional social roles as mothers and caregivers, such as, policies about child protection, or those related to these traditional social roles, such as education and health
care (Thomas, 1994). Women try to change policies in these
areas primarily through agenda-setting activities in the legislature, where they have the most leeway to be policy leaders
in their areas of interest (Tamerius, 1995). Women introduce,
sponsor, and cosponsor more legislation in these areas.
Women legislators may have similar policy priorities and
interests to each other and different policy priorities from
men, but the specific alternatives to solving these policy
problems may not be the same. Instead, the policy alternatives women favor are often “filtered through their own differences as a female” (Carroll, 2002).
Female legislators see themselves as representatives of
women (Mansbridge, 1999). Mansbridge (1999) identifies
this type of representation as “surrogate representation” in
that women are able to act on behalf of women as a constituency beyond district or political boundaries, particularly
because of the marginalized place of their social group in the
political past.
The biggest differences in men and women’s political
opinions tends to focus on policy priorities,
in that women
are more interested in policies dealing with families, children, and women’s rights as well as policies related to other
areas, such as education, health care, and welfare. They tend
to be more supportive of government activism and regulation, more compassionate toward low-income and minority
groups, less supportive of the use of force and in some cases,
more socially conservative than men (Thomas, 1994).
Group Affiliation and Choice Shift
Understanding the attitudes and opinions of a specific gender
or an individual legislator is only part of the puzzle. One
must realize the influence of group dynamics and how they
are intertwined in fostering opinion change. Friedkin (1999)
stated that the study of choice shift and group polarization is
a prominent line of work for social psychologists. It examines the effect of group memberships on individual attitudes
.
A choice shift is said to occur when, after a group’s interaction on an issue, the mean final opinion of group members
differs from the members’ initial opinion. Group polarization
is said to occur when the choice shift is in the same direction
as the mean initial opinion (e.g., if on some issue, the initial
attitude of the average member is positive, then the subsequent attitude of the average member will be more
positive).
Choice shifts can arise simply from inequalities in the
relative influence of persons in a group interaction. A choice
shift is the product of a group’s social structure in which certain members have more influence than others during the
opinion formation process (Berger, Fisek, Hamit, Robert, &
Zelditch, 1977).
An examination of these dynamics and the other factors
reviewed from the literature are key to understanding how an
individual is influenced by his or her affiliation with multiple groups. These groups include, but are not limited to, party
affiliation, caucus membership, regional and demographic
affiliation,
and constituent obligations. Understanding group
dynamics provides a better theoretical understanding of
those groups in which social structures affect individual and
group outcomes.
The knowledge gained from this review informed the
construction of the data collection instrument used in this
study.
Data and Method
This study utilized an ex post facto research design to analyze perceptual differences between two groups (superintendents and legislators). The dependent variables included
opinions relative to school funding in four categories: equity
and adequacy, personal values, political ideology, and social
influence. These constructs were evaluated within several
demographic independent variables: gender, ethnicity, education level, population of representative districts, and average household income of the districts.
The participants consisted of two groups: 140 elected
members of the State of Alabama legislature (comprising
105 members of the House of Representatives and 35 members of the Alabama State Senate) and 132 local school
superintendents (39 of whom served as elected superintendents and 93 having been appointed by their respective
boards). All were included to maximize the sample size.
Because of the uniqueness of this study, the researcher
developed the data collection instrument—a self-administered, Likert-type scale questionnaire, School Funding
Factors Survey (available upon request). Specific items targeted perceptual beliefs relative to the four constructs: equity
and adequacy, personal values, political ideology, and social
influence. Five demographic variables were also assessed on
each participant: gender, ethnicity, education level, population of representative districts, and average household
income of the districts represented by the two groups.
Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency reliability coefficients
were computed on the survey and all subscales.
Content validity of the instrument was established through
a two-stage process. First, survey items were extracted from
the existing literature on the subject and a thorough review
was conducted by experts in the field of higher education.
Second, the instrument was reviewed for content validity by
a panel of experts consisting of three legislators, and three
superintendents. After receiving input from these experts,
final edits to the instrument were completed and it was
approved for use by the university Institutional Review
Board.
The survey instrument was sent to each legislator and
superintendent in the State of Alabama.
The survey included
a cover letter that provided the participant with an overview
of the study; in addition to assuring anonymity, it contained
information about who to contact with questions regarding
their rights as participants. Each potential respondent was
contacted by fax to inform them that they would be receiving
a survey regarding state finance of education. A link to the
online survey was subsequently emailed to each superintendent; a hard copy of the questionnaire was mailed to each
legislator (along with a stamped, self-addressed envelope).
The superintendent participants had the option to either link
directly to the survey, submit their responses online or download a hard copy of the survey and fax or mail their responses.
The legislative participants had the option to complete the
hard copy and either mail or fax their responses to the
researcher. To maximize response rates, differences in data
collection procedures were implemented after consultation
with legislative and state education staff.
An array of descriptive statistics was computed on all
variables. The analyses comparing the legislator and superintendent perspectives on school funding issues along the
four constructs was conducted using two-tailed independent
groups Student’s t tests. Comparison of the superintendent
and legislator groups on demographics variables was conducted with a Pearson’s chi-square test of independence. All
statistical analyses were conducted at the 0.05 level of statistical significance using the SPSS statistical software
package
Results
Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency reliability coefficients
for the School Funding Factors Survey and its subscales are
provided in Table 1. These reliability coefficients were
deemed acceptable for a user-designed instrument. Increasing
the number of items per subscale, however, may have
improved the reliability.
Before analysis, the data were examined for overall accuracy. This included checks for missing data elements, duplication of records, sufficient frequency counts in each level of
variable to support the chi-square test of independence (categories were collapsed where necessary), and deletion of
unusable records. Generally, records were eliminated from
the data for missing demographic data elements or duplication of the entire record. Furthermore, records were eliminated from analysis if small counts could cause spurious
results in later analyses or potentially threaten the anonymity
of the respondent; for example, the single informant who
was self-reported as “Native American/Alaskan Indian.”
Four subscale scores and a total score were generated from
the survey items. First, the subscale score for equity and adequacy was formed by summing the first 15 items of the survey; this score could range from a low of 15 to a high of 75.
Second, the subscale score for personal values was formed
by summing items 16 through 20; this score could range
from a low of 5 to a high of 25. Third, the subscale score for
political ideology was formed by summing items 21 through
28; this score could range from a low of 8 to a high of 40.
Fourth, the subscale score for social influence was formed by
summing items 29 through 33; this score could range from a
low of 5 to a high of 25. Finally, an overall scale score for
funding factors was formed by summing all School Funding
Factors Survey items; this score could range from a low of
33 to a high of 165.
The basic demographic analysis is displayed in Table 2.
Among respondents approximately 40% were legislators,
and 60% were school superintendents.
Responses to highest education level were recoded into
five hierarchical levels. A majority of respondents, 77.5%,
fell into one of three categories with very nearly equal percentages. The largest percentage of respondents were at the
level of “post-master’s (no doctorate)” at 26.5%, followed
closely by those responding at the level of “doctorate” with
27.2%, and those claiming “master’s degree” following
closely at 23.8% of the sample. Recoding the variable district population resulted in two categories with three times more respondents identifying their district population as
“less than 50,000.” The variable average income showed
45.0% of the respondents at the middle level of
“US$30,000-US$60,000.”
The difference in subscale and total scale means between
legislators and superintendents are given in Table 3. In particular, the difference in means on the construct Equity and
Adequacy was found to be statistically significant (p < .05).
The data show a difference between legislators and superintendents on the factor of equity and adequacy on the order of
0.4 standard deviation, a moderate effect (Cohen, 1988),
with legislators scoring, on average, 2.14 points higher than
superintendents on this scale. This score indicates greater
disagreement by the legislators than disagreement by the
superintendents.
All categorical variables were investigated for differences
on the demographic variables using the chi-square test of
independence. The results of these tests are found in Table
4.
Statistically significant differences (p < .05) between legislators and superintendents were found on education level,
district population and average income with superintendents
exhibiting higher educational attainment, representing
smaller population bases, and bringing home smaller paychecks than legislators (see Table 2).
Further analysis involved comparing legislator and superintendent mean responses to each survey item using a student’s independent samples t test. Because 33 simultaneous t tests were performed on the data, the Bonferroni correction
was applied. To control for experiment-wise Type I error, the
significance level required to ensure a true 0.05 level of significance was 0.05/33 = 0.0015. On 12 of the items, mean
differences were found to be statistically significant (p <
.05). Eight of these items (6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15)
were used in generating the construct of equity and adequacy.
Those 8 items represented 53.3% of the subscale’s score.
Two additional items (19 and 20) were subsumed into the
construct of personal values and contributed 40% of the subscale score. One item (23) was included in the construct of
political ideology and contributed 12.5% of the subscale’s
score. One final item (29) was a component in the construct
of social influences and represented 20% of the subscales
score. The means, standard deviations, differences between
group means, by item, are reported in Table 5.
Superintendents outscored legislators on items: 10, 12,
20, 23, and 29. Note that a larger scaled value indicates less
agreement with the survey item statement. The complete text
of the survey is available from the authors upon request
