Human-interest Frames, Competing Attitude Objects,

and Understanding Political Policies

by

Francis Neely

State University of New York

at Stony Brook

fneely@ic.sunysb.edu

Prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta GA,
September 2-5, 1999.
Abstract

Given our social nature and keen propensity to attend to information about others, how does the
presence of the person in the human-interest media frame influence our understanding of political
policies? An experiment tests hypotheses that the person in the frame will (1) distract the audience and
hinder efforts to encode the issue information, and (2) lead to issue attitudes that are shaped by one's
feelings for the person. The results support the latter--overall approval of the policy and tendencies for
bias toward it are linked considerably to attitudes about the person. However, no evidence of distraction
were found--both person-centered and person-less narratives facilitated accurate understanding of the
issue. Implications and future refinements are discussed.

2
 Introduction

Everyone loves a good story. This paper examines how the use of one type of story may
influence the understanding of a political issue. Specifically, the study focuses on how the media's use of
a human-interest frame to report on a political policy may affect the audience's opinion and
comprehension of the policy. I focus on the competition between the two attitude objects--the policy
itself and the person attached to it in the human-interest frame.
Since we are social creatures with a keen propensity to attend to information about people, how
does the mere presence of a person--any person--affect our processing of political issue information?
Given the recent proliferation of types of media frames in the literature,1 it is important to situate new
work and to justify any new dimensions of study. I now turn to that task.

Attitudes for Persons and Attitudes for Policies

The media's portrayal of complex political issues through a vignette complete with a setting, plot,
and main character has been described as a requirement of the industry (Gans 1979, 161). There is no
question that adding protagonists to political policy news stories helps readers connect with the story.
What is open for examination, however, is the degree to which the actor in the story may facilitate, or
hinder, one's understanding of the policy. In this section I will mention some of the broader bases that
shape this study. After that is a short discussion of the particular framing literature this study follows.
If our innate understanding of persons as attitude objects is quite different from other, topical,
attitude objects, then the role of the person in framing stories about political policies might be
consequential. For decades scholars have borrowed from psychology to better understand citizens and
their perceptions of government, testing theories and contributing back to the literature with applied
findings. This holds for the study of issue attitudes, from Converse's (1964) work on belief systems to
more recent models of survey response (Zaller 1992; Zaller and Feldman 1992). It is also the case for the
study of candidate evaluation, from the Michigan Model's use of group referent theory (Campbell,
Converse, Miller and Stokes 1960) to more recent adaptations from cognitive psychology (Lodge,
McGraw, and Stroh 1989; Lodge, Steenbergen, and Brau 1995; Rahn, Aldrich, and Borgida 1994).

1
Some examples of fairly recent contributions that fail to neatly compliment each other are conflict, moral
value, economic, powerlessness, and human impact (Neuman, Just, and Crigler 1992), issue, and strategy (Capella,
Hall Jamieson 1997), talk, fight, impasse, and crisis (Jasperson, Shah, Watts, Faber, and Fan 1998), and conflict,
strategy, public interest, policy, and animus (Chanley 1999), to name a few.

3
 Typically, research on how we form our understanding of two main classes of political attitude
objects--persons and issues--is not unified. We do, of course, use respondent's stances on issues to
understand how they form their evaluations of candidates (Downs 1957; Enelow and Hinich 1984;
Rabinowitz and MacDonald 1989). And balance theory has helped explain how relationships between
issue attitudes and political figures and groups may be non-recursive (Heider 1958; Sniderman, Brody,
and Tetlock 1991). But to date political scientists have tended to look at the formation of issue attitudes
as distinct from our evaluation of persons--say, political candidates.
Some psychologists have suggested that our high level of motivation to size up a person whom
we meet may lead to processes that are simply not applicable to less urgent or less social concerns (Hastie
and Pennington 1989). Political psychologists have speculated on the distinction between an on-line
cognitive process used when evaluating persons and a memory-based process for constructing issue
attitudes (Zaller 1992, 278-9). Direct test of this distinction are scant and have produced mixed results
(McGraw and Pinney 1990; Neely and Guge 1998).
What endures is an appreciation in the literature for the distinction between persons as attitude
objects and issues as attitude objects. But there is more support for that distinction than can be found in
the political science, or political psychology, research. Evolutionary psychologists make a strong case for
residual abilities shared by species that arose from long-standing needs that only recently (relatively
speaking) have become outdated. Among these are surveillance skills, cooperation, mating, parenting,
and language (Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby 1992). Probably the most well-known work in this area is
Chomsky's linguistic research (1975). What seems likely is that we possess an innate sensitivity for
persons that may be residual from times past when the need for friend-or-foe distinctions was much more
pressing.
My focus on a distinction between the nature of competing attitude objects, then, may be tied to
both a broader base in evolutionary and cognitive psychology, and a more specific tradition in the
political science literature. Of course, I am not the first to take up these questions. Many have studied the
media's preoccupation with personalities and figures in politics.

Human-interest Frames and Framing Studies

The study of framing has been called a fractured paradigm (Entman 1993). It is a literature with
some notably rigorous roots (Goffman 1974), yet today is filled with concepts, operationalizations, and
terms that often overlap. This underlines the need to clarify my use of the term, framing.
Scheufele helps us by classifying framing studies in a two-by-two typology with one factor
distinguishing between types of frames--media frames and individual frames--and the other factor noting

4
how the frame is specified in the research design--either a dependent variables or an independent variable
(1999). This study examines media frames of political policies and considers them as variables that may
explain something about an audience's understanding of that policy.
A useful definition for the types of media frames explored here is given by Cappella and Hall
Jamieson: "[N]ews frames are those rhetorical and stylistic choices, reliably identified in news, that alter
the interpretations of the topics treated and are a consistent part of the news environment" (39-40, 1997).
In short, what I call a human-interest frame is any news report that is episodic, person-centered, and
relays a narrative about some ordinary citizen who is not characterized in a political manner. In addition,
I constrain the project to a subset of human-interest stories--those about political policies, and as a starting
point for a larger research program I look only at domestic policies.
My goal is to do more than merely identify a set of media effects; I hope to provide some insight
into the processes involved. At the same time, I attempt to fill a gap in the extant literature. How the
presence of an ordinary person in the public policy news frame influences one's understanding, or
comprehension, of the policy is a question that is essentially nowhere isolated and examined.2 Clearly,
the influence of persons in policy frames are studied, but these are typically elite actors who carry
important political information into the news story (Mondak 1993a, Mondak 1993b). An important
question lies prior to that research--how does attaching a person, any person, to the issue affect our
processing of the issue information, and our ultimate understanding of the issue? Three studies most
closely aligned with that question deserve mention.
First, Iyengar's (1991) work on notions of responsibility, conditional on exposure to episodic or
thematic frames, uses similar frames and asks similar questions. He considers an episodic frame to be
one that "focuses on specific events or particular cases, while the thematic news frame places political
issues and events in some general context" (1991, 2). While the episodic frame usually will center on a
person, it may instead focus on an event. It is not the presence of a person, rather it is the specific, narrow
aspect of the frame and the singular nature of the narrative, that renders it an episode. This is apparent
once the balance of the book and the contrasting concept--the thematic frame--are considered. His main
dependent variables are built on the concept of responsibility and how the audience perceives it,
conditional on the media frame. My focus is more on comprehension and understanding of the elements
constituting the policy.

2
The one exception found is by Price, Tewksbury, and Powers (1997) who do explore the impact of a
human-interest frame on the nature of attitudes regarding a university tuition hike.

5
 Second, Bennett's (1988) notion of personalized news stories identifies styles that infuse the
person into the political topic at hand. Bennett describes personalized news as "the journalistic bias that
give preference to the individual actors and human-interest angles in events while downplaying
institutional and political considerations that establish the social contexts for those events" (26). This
does isolate the addition of persons and persons' stories. It is close to the inquiry I pursue. But what
Bennett includes that I do not is the personalization of elite actors in politics, say, the president. This
brings to mind a framing literature that examines how journalists frame stories about politicians, and what
the impact is (Cappella and Hall Jamieson 1997, Jasperson, Shah, Watts, Faber, and Fan 1998). While
these are important questions, I argue that we will benefit from asking a question that precedes them. As
a first step, why not isolate and estimate the influence of the mere presence of the person, sans political
cues?
Meanwhile, Neuman, Just, and Crigler (1992) focus on a set of political issues in their study,
using social constructions to identify five frames: conflict, moral values, economics, powerlessness, and
human impact (chap. 4). Their human impact frame "focuses on individuals and groups who are likely to
be affected by an issue," and is closer yet to the human-interest frame I employ. Here, however, the
concept is sliced too narrowly. We can imagine human-interest stories, for instance, that may also be
stories about what they term powerlessness or morality. Indeed, the authors provide an example of what
they call a morality frame that is also an apparent human-interest frame (73).
These are three prominent works that closely align with the concepts and the direction of this
project. My goal is to extract a common factor among the above frames--the person--and isolate how that
influences attitudes about political policies. This means that the human-interest frame I employ is a
subset of Iyengar's episodic frame--it is episodic, but includes only narratives that center around a main
character. It is also a subset of what Bennett calls personalized news stories. The issues I examine are
personalized, but only among ordinary citizens as situated actors, and not among political elites. Finally,
the frame I use subsumes Neuman et al.'s human impact frame. In addition to their human impact
category, it may sometimes include stories framed in what they call conflict and morality styles.
To summarize, media frames of political policy stories may be considered along a continuum of
how personalized they are. At one extreme is the person-centered story and at the other is what I call the
person-less story.3 Secondly, such stories may be told either with a compliment of political cues, or

3
This is not unlike the overall dimension that Rucinski calls personalized bias (1992). I prefer person-
centered and person-less as terms denoting theoretical end points to a Bennett's dimension of personalized news.

6
absent political cues. The following table displays these two dimensions and examples of the attitude
objects found in each class of framing style.

Types of Political Policy Frames

(AO = attitude object accompanying the policy)

person-centered <--------------------> person-less

_____________________________________________________________
with no political cues | human-interest frame | person-less issue frame |
| AO: ordinary citizens | AO: organizations, corporations |
| ___________________________________________________________
with political cues | | strategy frames, e.g. | person-less political frame |
| AO: politicians, elites | AO: Congress, parties, e.g. |
|_____________________________________________________________

Much of the work in this literature has been done in the lower left-hand cell. This project
examines the top row and experimentally isolates the influence of adding a person to the story. Now,
news stories about political policies usually do include some political cues by mentioning partisan or
ideological labels, or elite actors. That is why in future work I plan to gradually add political cues to both
conditions--in other words, gradually include the bottom row in the analysis. As a starting point, and as a
means for closer examination of how persons influence perceptions and the formation of political policy
attitudes, I begin with no cues.4
This should clarify the nature of my primary independent variable, and its origins. Next, I present
my hypotheses, and elaborate on two main dependent variables--one's understanding of a political policy,
and one's tendency for bias.

Research Hypotheses
I proceed on the bases of the two foundations mentioned above: First, what we know about the
processing of political information suggests that political persons and political issues may be considered
in distinct fashion. Second, our innate social nature may lead us to pay especially close attention to new
persons we encounter. The following hypotheses are designed to explore the competing nature of the two

4
I have set aside an important third dimension. In the future I will also consider the degree to which
person-centered frames focus on an individual versus a group (Nelson and Kinder 1996; Barnhurst and Mutz 1997;
Mutz 1998).

7
attitude objects in the human-interest frame--the issue itself, and the person attached to it. First, I expect
that the person in the story will attract most of the audience's attention.
H1: Subjects reading a human-interest version of a novel political issue will tend to focus more
on the person than on the substance of the issue.
As one's attention is directed toward the person in the story, at least two implications are that (a) the
person may be a distraction causing information about the issue to not be encoded, or (b) the person may
be serving as a facilitator of encoding, an object around which the issue information is being organized. I
hypothesize the former, and expect that, as a result of ineffective encoding of the substance of the issue,
H2: Subjects reading a human-interest version of a novel political issue will tend to have a less
accurate understanding of the issue
.
By less accurate understanding of the issue I mean a poorer comprehension of the facts about the
policy. These are the elements that constitute the issue. For a gasoline tax, say, some elements
constituting the issue may be (a) the dollar amount to be taxed, (b) the spending target for the raised
revenues, and (c) the types of fuel affected (e.g., gasoline only; not diesel fuel). Measures of this
knowledge about substantive characteristics of the policy are a significant part of my analyses, and I call
the variable, accuracy.
In addition to a compromised sense of accuracy, some bias may result. If the person attached to
the issue compromises or precludes encoding of the substance of the issue, what happens when someone
is asked later to report an opinion about the policy? In the face of an incomplete or missing set of
information about the policy, attitudes about the person may come into play.
H3: Subjects reading a human-interest version of a novel political issue will tend to have a more
biased understanding of the issue; and the direction of the bias will match the attitude about the
person.

By bias I mean a tendency to report aspects of the policy in a manner that is systematically wrong (either
mostly pro or mostly con). This bias may be related to attitudes about the person in the article. Taking
the gasoline tax example, and assuming the person we ask does not want to pay higher taxes, a bias in
favor of the policy might lead someone to say that (a) the amount of the tax is less than it really is, (b) the
spending target is something more worthy than it is, or (c) fewer types of fuel will be affected than really
are. This is another key variable in the project and is labeled, simply, bias.
If someone's understanding of the substance of a political policy is systematically slanted in favor
of or against it, and if the direction of that bias matches his or her feelings about the person in the story,
then it is reasonable to expect that
H4: Subjects reading a human-interest version of a novel political issue will tend to report an
overall attitude about the policy that matches their overall attitude about the person in the story.

8
These expectations are based on the assumption that people will attend more closely to the person in the
story than the to the particulars of the issue in the story. If that is the case, then readers should have a
better understanding of the person than of the issue. Rounding the circle of these expectations, then, it
follows that
H5: Subjects reading a human-interest version of a novel political issue will tend to have a more
accurate understanding of the person in the story than of the issue in the story.

With these specific expectations in hand, I now turn to a description of the empirical sections of the
project.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

Design, Stimuli, and Data

Experimental design is an appropriate method to pursue this inquiry. It allows for some fairly
tight control over a number of factors that would otherwise limit the ability to determine whether and how
much the person in the frame influences notions about the policy. These factors are (a) old issue attitudes,
and the customary, strong cues of (b) party label, and (c) ideological label. What is called for is an issue
that is truly political and novel, yet is fairly non-partisan and non-ideological. Meanwhile, using an actual
policy instead of a fictional one adds some degree of external validity. At first, these goals may appear
unreachable. But such issues are available, and empirical checks in a previous study suggest that the
policy chosen does control for these factors.5
Let me be clear. By choosing a novel political policy it allows attitude formation to be examined,
as opposed to attitude change. This limits to some extent the problem of untangling the influences of new
stimuli on old attitudes, and offers a cleaner look at the impact of human-interest frames. A novel person

5
A prior study used identical items to describe the person and the policy in a list format which provided no
narrative. Its purpose was to set a baseline for future findings, test measures, and to serve as a pilot for the overall
project which includes two more experimental designs, content analysis, and interviews with journalists. Those
preliminary results were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, Seattle WA,
March 25-27, 1999. In sum:
Subjects who read about a policy with a person attached had less accurate comprehension about the
specifics of the policy, and a greater tendency for bias than did those who read about the policy with no
person attached. In addition, determinants of expected vote choice varied across conditions. For those
reading the person-less version an expected and obvious set of factors explained their vote choice; for those
reading the personified version the obvious factors did not explain vote choice, while feelings about the
person did.
In this paper I will not systematically analyze the two studies.

9
in the form of a situated actor is used for similar reasons, and for reasons explained in the first section.
Both attitude objects, then, are new to the subjects. Now, it may be possible to control for partisan and
ideological influences analytically; but, especially as a first step, it will allow fuller isolation and clearer
inferences if these factors are controlled in the design itself.
The Design: The experiment is a 2 (human-interest frame/person-less frame) X 2 (mostly
positive attitude object/mostly negative attitude object) design, plus one other condition. Most analyses
were between-subjects comparisons. However, within-subjects analyses are also reported here. Mock
newsprint articles were used as stimuli (see Appendix A). All subjects read the same description of the
issue; what varied across the five conditions was what they read just prior to it:

(1) a human-interest vignette with the main actor described in mostly positive terms,
(2) a human-interest vignette with the main actor described in mostly negative terms,
(3) the same narrative, with no persons mentioned, mostly positive,
(4) the same narrative, with no persons mentioned, mostly negative, and
(5) a filler article of equal length.

The manipulations occur in the 2 X 2 portion of the design within the narrative that takes up the first half
of the article. These manipulations were done carefully in order to preserve the syntax used, the order of
the information presented, and the overall volume of information. The texts were formatted in newsprint
style and appeared to have been clipped from a newspaper or magazine.
The Policy: I reviewed state ballot initiatives and referenda to find a suitable issue. Ballot
propositions provide a venue where citizens make judgments on issues that are often fairly new, and
frequently lack clear partisan cues. In addition, ballot propositions rarely make the national news, so it is
unlikely that the subjects had heard of most of these policies. Finally, ballot initiatives are political in the
sense that they involve direct democratic process via elections, and they are often political in the broader
sense of the distribution of scarce resources.
The policy used is a proposal for the reform of K-12 public education spending priorities. It
appeared on the 1998 California primary ballot as Proposition 223, and was called "95/5: The
Educational Efficiency Initiative.6 A description of the policy was determined by the actual initiative
wording, and is mostly positive (see Appendix B for a portion of the official proposition). That
characterization remains constant across conditions.

6
Prop. 223 was an initiative designed to limit spending on the administration of public education. It would
have required K-12 administrative costs to be capped at 5% of a school district's budget, assuring that 95% would be
spent on-site. Prop. 223 failed to pass with 45.5% of the votes cast in favor, and 54.5% opposed.

10
 Competing Attitude Objects: In the human-interest frame, the need for education reform is
illustrated through the tale of Cynthia Wilson, a teacher. She is described in one condition in mostly
positive terms, and in another condition in mostly negative terms (either 9 positive items accompanied by
3 negatives, or vice versa). In the person-less frame, all mention of individuals is avoided. Instead, the
narrative tells the story of a school. The manipulation of positive and negative characterization matches
that of the teacher's.
Varying the degree to which the person (and school) were described in positive terms will allow a
closer look at how ideas about the person may influence approval of the issue. In the human-interest
frame a person is often described in a sympathy-evoking fashion. How much we care about the person
may have some bearing on how much we feel the political policy is useful or desirable. If feelings about
the person do influence attitudes about the issue, then a positive portrait should lead to more support for
the policy. Conversely, a negative portrait might leave the reader without sympathy, and without a sense
of urgency for the policy.
Logistics and the Instrument: Subjects were either undergraduate students (132) or were students
in the university's continuing education program (33), working toward masters' degrees. All were
recruited from Political Science courses at SUNY at Stony Brook. They either volunteered, fulfilled a
research requirement, or earned extra course credit for their participation. The group was fairly young
(mean age = 25), about half female (88) and half male (76), and of fairly diverse racial and ethnic
backgrounds (60% white, 10% Asian, 11% African American, 12% Latino, and 7% other). They came
from a variety of family income levels ((in a scale ranging from 0 = less than $10K to 1 = over $100K, M
= .58, SD = .32), and most lived in the suburbs (132) with a significant portion from New York City (33).
In the study, subjects read three news articles (four, to those in the condition using the filler
article). Two accompanying articles were included to provide some context and to simulate (albeit
marginally) something closer to the experience of reading a magazine or newspaper. One article was on
the impact of the drought in the South, and one was about how polling data indicate that Gore's campaign
may be hurt by citizens' opinions about Clinton.
Most of the subjects completed the experiment in groups of 10-15 people in a large, quiet room
that seats 150, and did so outside of class time. They sat separate from others at individual desks. When
done, they were given a debriefing statement that described the general purpose of the study. About one-
fifth of the subjects completed the questionnaire during their class. All subjects were randomly assigned
to conditions.
The instrument was a paper-and-pencil survey format that took thirty to forty minutes to
complete. It consisted of two parts. Part I was taken from the subject and replaced with part II in order to

11
keep subjects from referring back to the news article when answering subsequent questions. Part I
consisted of general instructions and consent form, demographic questions, instructions and the article(s),
a vocabulary test, and a political knowledge test. Part II contained questions about subjects' overall
approval of the attitude object(s), accuracy and bias question sets for the policy and person (or school),
party and ideology checks, responsibility questions, and a salience question set.
Prominent Measures: As stated above, the two main dependent variables measure how
accurate subjects' knowledge of the policy is, and how bias they are toward it. The accuracy variable is
measured on two conceptual levels--general knowledge of the issue, and more specific knowledge. These
measures were also taken on subjects' understanding of the competing attitude objects--the teacher and
the school.
Levels of very general knowledge about the policy, the teacher, and the school were measured
with a scale summing correct answers to five multiple-choice questions that asked:

for the policy: its name, whether it was already law in New York, to whom it applied (e.g., the
state, the county, New York City), what type of schools it affected (e.g., public, private), how it
would change education policy.
for the teacher: sex, name, occupation, amount of job experience, type of school where
employed (e.g., elementary, high school).
for the school: public or private, name, nature of the problem described (e.g., unsafe, in disrepair,
overcrowded), age of school, type (e.g., elementary, high school).

The aim of this measure is to gauge the broadest, most fundamental understanding of the attitude objects.
More specific comprehension of the policy was measured by providing a list of items and asking
subjects whether these items described the policy they read about. A similar task followed to gauge
specific comprehension about the teacher or school. A ten-point scale with endpoints labeled "agree
strongly" and "disagree strongly" was offered for each item. Eight of the items were found in the article
and were elements that actually constitute the issue (e.g., is tax neutral, requires regular reviews of school
budgets), described the person (is pretty fair in the classroom, is a good role model for the students), or
described the school (e.g., is a place where students are treated fairly, provides good role models for the
students).
Note that the items describing the person and school are as close to identical as possible. In
addition, the mix of negative and positive items in this task were matched to the condition read by the
subject. For example, those reading about a mostly negative version of the person (9 of 12 elements
describing her were negative) were also asked to recognize items of the same distribution (6 of 8 items
were negative).

12
 A scale was constructed by summing the eight responses and standardizing to a range of 0 to 1.
A score of 1 on that scale reflects a perfectly accurate understanding of the specifics about the issue,
person, or school, and a score of 0 reflects a completely inaccurate understanding.
Then, tendencies toward a bias for or against the issue, person, or school were measured. Bias
was approximated by gauging subjects' willingness to make extensions about the attitude object in a
directional fashion (either consistently for, or consistently against). This was done in the same manner as
the specific accuracy measure just described. Instead of actual items from the article, six statements were
listed that extended the information about the attitude object beyond what was provided in the stimulus.
Some examples are, regarding the issue: "costs more money than it saves," and "will increase the average
tests scores of students;" regarding the person: "was once put on probation by the school," and "is liked
by her students;" for the school: "was once put on probation by the district," and "is liked by the
students."
Three of the six statements drew negative extensions and three statements made positive
extensions. This controls for any overall response set effects such as a general willingness to tend to
agree to statements. A summary index was then built. First, the signs for these items were matched by
inverting the negative items, then the values for the six responses were summed and standardized 0 to 1.
The scale, then, represents a systematic willingness to say items were in the article when they were not,
and to do so in a biased manner. A score of 1 on the scale means that someone was both totally unwilling
to accept the negative extensions and entirely willing to accept the positive extensions. A score of 0
indicates the converse. Zero, then, is a bias against the attitude object and 1 is a bias in favor of the
attitude object. Next, I report the results of the study, followed by a discussion and concluding remarks.

RESULTS

My hypotheses were that the person in the human-interest frame would occupy the reader's
attention, would inhibit one's ability to encode the issue information, and would lead to biases shaped by
one's disposition for the person. To preview the overall findings, it appears that the person in the story
did become connected to the issue, and that attitudes about the person and the issue are intertwined.
However, the presence of the person did not impede subjects' comprehension of the policy. Instead, the
narrative--about the person or the school--appears to have facilitated understanding of the specifics of the
issue.

13
 Below I present the findings by first reporting subjects' overall opinions, then tests of the
relationships between those opinions. After that I report on the influence of political expertise, and note
the results from measures of perceived responsibility.

Controls: Party and Ideology

Recall that my goal was to write stimuli that were fairly void of partisan or ideological content.
In order to check to what extent that happened subjects were asked whether they thought the policy in the
news frame sounded like something that would be promoted by one party or another, or by one
ideological group or another. As Table 1 shows, about twice as many subjects thought that the issue
sounded like something promoted by liberals or Democrats than by conservatives or Republicans. About
four out of ten subjects said that either could be promoting it. Similar and slightly more exaggerated
patterns held when subjects were asked about the person in the human-interest frame.

- Table 1 here -

What matters more than these differences is whether notions about party and ideology came into
play as subjects formed their attitudes. To test whether the perceived partisan and ideological nature of
the issue influenced subjects' overall approval of the issue fully factorial ANOVAs were specified, first
for party, then for ideology. The dependent variable was one's opinion of the issue. The factors for the
party model were the subject's self-reported party affiliation and the party whom the subject thought
might be promoting 95/5. A similar model was specified to test ideological influences.7
One significant relationship was found. Support for the issue (on a 0-to-1 scale) did vary
according to which party subjects thought would be promoting it. Considerably lower support was found
among those who thought Republicans may be promoting 95/5: If subjects thought 95/5 sounded like
Democrats, approval of the policy was M = .70; if they said either party, M = .71; but if subjects thought it
sounded Republican, then approval dropped to M = .59 (F[156,2] = 4.73, p < .01).
However, these differences were not conditional the party of the subject. This suggests that the
effort to control party and ideology succeeded fairly well. In other words, it is not the case that
Democrats felt any more positive about the issue when they considered it a Democratic issue, nor
Republicans who perceived it as a Republican issue (F[150,4] = 1.38, p < .25). And Democrats did not

7
An effort to test the same questions regarding opinions about the person were unsuccessful due to small N
within cells. Of the nine cells in that ANOVA, four had less than five cases.

14
feel more negative about 95/5 if they perceived it as a Republican issue, or vice versa. The same absence
of a relationship held for ideological groups (F[151,4] = 1.22, p < .31). In short, the policy appears to be
sufficiently non-ideological and non-partisan as it relates to the process of attitude formation. The
following analyses can be considered with that in mind.

Opinions about the Policy, Person, and School

Subjects reported their overall approval of the issue by responding to a 10-point scale with the
endpoints labeled, "disapprove strongly" and "approve strongly" (that measure was re-scaled to 0-1
range). In addition, those who read an article with a vignette were asked their opinion of the other
attitude object (either the person or the school).
The Policy: Overall, subjects mildly approved of the 95/5 policy (M = .68). Attitudes about the
policy did not differ significantly across the three framing conditions (human-interest, M = .67; person-
less, M = .71; no narrative, M = .66; F[2,163] = 1.02, p < .36). The other main factor of the design--the
positive/negative nature of the person and school--did lead to minor differences in attitudes about the
policy (positive attitude object M = .72, negative attitude object M = .66; F[1,129]= 2.70, p < .11),
although those differences might well have occurred by chance. Still, the direction is as one would
expect, with a positive person or school leading to more favorable policy attitudes.
An ANOVA was estimated to see how the two main factors of the experiment influenced issue
attitudes. The outcome was fairly unexpected. Manipulating how positively the person and school were
described was meant to alter their likability, or the degree to which the reader may feel sympathy for
them. Decreasing their positive attributes was expected to lead to less sympathy, and less call for reform
of education policy. In the condition with negative descriptions, then, less approval of the issue was
expected, especially in the human-interest frame. This did occur, but mostly in the person-less frame and
with borderline statistical significance (likeable-positive school M = .76, unlikable-negative school M =
.67, F[127,3] = 2.77, p < .10).
Meanwhile, in the human-interest frame, altering the description of the teacher did not lead to any
real difference in readers' approval of the issue (likeable/positive teacher M = .67, unlikable-negative
teacher M = .65). If the person in the news frame plays an integral part in attitude formation of new
political issues, then it is not clear why this manipulation led to differences only in the person-less
version. (I return to this question in later sections.)
The Person and School: Subjects' opinions about the teacher and the school did follow fairly
predictable patterns. Feelings about the person were fairly neutral (M = .51), while feelings about the
school were slightly negative (M = .44). Manipulating the likability of these attitude objects led to

15
significant and expected differences in person attitudes, but less so in attitudes about the school:
Approval of the likeable-positive teacher was M = .59, compared to the unlikable-negative teacher, M =
.42 (F[64,1] = 10.47, p < .01). Differences in the approval for the school were in the expected direction,
but were not statistically distinguishable: For the likeable-positive school, approval was M = .47, and for
the unlikable-negative school, M = .40 (F[61,1] = 1.50, p < .23).
Finally, for subjects reading a vignette, the order of the overall opinion questions was varied
(person/school first, or issue first) in order to control for any sequence effect. A paired-samples t test
showed that the mean opinions of the policy varied little, based on the sequence of the questions alone (M
= .59 for the first question, M = .56 for the second question; t = .88).

Attitudes Linked to Attitudes

If we look beyond the main factors of the experiment and consider the way attitudes covary, it
appears that subjects' opinions about the person and the policy are related in a straight-forward fashion,
while their opinions about the school and the policy are not. In hypotheses 3 and 4 I expect that approval
for the person will covary with approval for the policy, and that approval of the person will match a bias
for the policy. An OLS regression estimated that in the human-interest frame about 30% of the variance
in subjects' issue approval was explained by the full range of subjects' opinions about the person (beta =
.29, p < .01). This remains the case even after considering the influence of some obvious variables.
Table 2 reports the same model estimated for both subjects reading the human-interest frame, and the
person-less version.

- Table 2 here -

Once the influence of subjects' age, level of education, household income, and place of residence are
unconstrained, the relationship between approval of the person and approval of the issue remained.8 As a
double-check on the potential influence of party and ideology, those variables were included in the

8
The variables in the model are distributed in the sample as follows:
variable mean S.D.
age (in years) 25 8.9
household income (0-1 range, where
0 is < $10K and 1 is > $100K) .58 .32
education (0-1 range, where
0 is < high school and 1 is PhD) .39 .17
residence (binary coding, where 1 = New York City, 0 = others) city N = 14 other N = 53

16
specification. So, approval of the person appears to be linearly connected to approval of the issue, while
attitudes about the school are not. This lends support for hypothesis 4.
What may lead to bias for the issue is less clear, theoretically, than what leads to support for the
issue. In the interest of parsimony and to avoid off-the-cuff specifications the balance of the links
between attitudes is examined with simple correlations. The three attitude objects (person, school, and
policy) were considered along with subjects' approval of them, and their biased tendencies. Figure 1
reports Pearson's r for each possible connection.
- Figure 1 here -

Figure 1 shows that, as seems obvious, if someone likes the policy, person, or school he or she is
more likely to display a positive bias toward the same. The strongest correlations are found between
subjects' approval of and bias for each attitude object, depicted by the horizontal lines. Now, looking at
the top half of the figure which denotes the human-interest frame we see that subjects' dispositions toward
the person are fairly well connected to how they think about the policy. These connections appear to be
absent throughout the person-less frame. Some support for hypothesis 3, therefore, is found in the data--
subjects' approval of the person may lead to bias about the issue.
Finally, what about general tendencies for bias, regardless of the attitude object? Might some
subjects simply be more willing to make positive extensions in general? This is not the case. There is no
statistical relationship between subjects' tendencies for bias about the person and bias about the issue, nor
for bias about the school and bias about the issue. In other words, subjects' tendencies for bias appear to
be selective.

A Curvilinear Relationship
Although the results in Figure 1 support some of my hypotheses, they contradict what the
ANOVA reported above showed. In that analysis subjects' approval of the policy in the person-less frame
was conditional on the negative-positive description of the school. This suggests that attitudes about the
school are connected to attitudes about the issue in some way. I looked further to discern the
characteristics of that relationship, and found a curvilinear connection.
First, I split subjects into three groups based on how much they approved of the competing
attitude object--either the school or the person. Using this as an independent variable in an ANOVA with
the dependent variable being one's approval of the policy produced a test for non-linear relationships.
This is something neither the correlations in Figure 1 nor the regression model in Table 2 considers. One-
way ANOVAs show a clear, linear trend in how approval of the person is related to approval of the policy

17
(for subjects with low levels of approval for the person, approval of the policy was M = .59; for medium
approval of the person, the policy M = .64; and for high approval of the person, policy M = .75 (F[63,2] =
4.09, p < .05). For those reading about he school, a clear and curvilinear relationship emerged (those with
low approval of the school approved of the policy at M = .79; for medium approval of the school, policy
approval M = .58; and for high approval of the school, policy M = .78 (F[60,2] = 8.83, p < .01).
Those ANOVAs, although informative, sacrifice information that lies untapped in the data. A
more rigorous test of this tie between school attitudes and issue attitudes is possible, simply by replicating
the regression model previously reported, this time including a second-order term for approval of the
school. That model was specified and is reported in Table 3. Since non-linear specifications cannot be
interpreted without considering the instantaneous effects of X on Y (simple slopes) at given values of X,
three such values are considered--the mean approval of the school, the mean plus one standard deviation,
and the mean minus one standard deviation. I report these along with the OLS estimates in Table 3. In
addition, the instantaneous slope may or may not reach conventional levels of statistical significance
across a range of X values. Therefore, t ratios were calculated for the three X values of interest (Aiken &
West 1991, Chap. 5).

- Table 3 here -

From this we see that around the average level of approval for the school, the magnitude of the
influence of school attitudes on policy attitudes is negligible, and is not statistically significant. By
contrast, as subjects' approval or disapproval of the school becomes more extreme, the size of the
influence on one's approval of the issue increases, and levels of statistical significance are reached. Those
influences, unfortunately, are not simple. As stated, moderate attitudes about the school do not explain
attitudes about the policy. For subjects who strongly disapprove of the school, as that disapproval of the
school becomes more negative, their approval of the issue increases. And the influence among those who
strongly approve of the school matches the pattern in the human-interest frame: as their approval of the
school increases, so does their support of the 95/5 initiative. Overall, the influence of school attitudes on
issue attitudes takes a U shape, with the middle portion not in play.
This requires another look at Figure 1, and a qualification to be noted. A relationship between
approval of the school and approval of the issue does appear to exist. However, it is a complicated one.
As feeling about the school--regardless of the positive or negative description read by the subjects--
become strongly approving, approval of the issue increases. Meanwhile, as subjects' disapproval of the
school grows more extreme, they also tend to approve more of the issue. For those not feeling strongly

18
one way or the other, there is no relationship between their attitudes about the school and their approval
of the issue.

Accurate Understanding of the Attitude Objects

If subjects are considering the person in the frame as they form opinions about the policy, and if
some may be considering the school as well, then what is the impact of that added information?
Hypotheses 2 and 5 posit that in the human-interest frame subjects' comprehension of the issue will be
compromised. That might be confirmed by (a) comparing between subjects: is there a difference in
understanding between subjects' reading the human-interest frame and those reading the person-less
frame?, and (b) comparing within subjects: do subjects have a better understanding of the person than of
the issue?
These comparisons were made for both the general level of information and the more specific.
Figure 2 shows that how accurately people understand the general aspects of the issue does not depend on
the frame. On the left-hand side of the figure we see that on average subjects displayed a high level of
knowledge about the broadest aspects of the policy, regardless of whether they read the human-interest
frame (M = .80), person-less frame (M = .80), or the filler article and no narrative (M = .82).

- Figure 2 here -

Next a comparison was made within subjects to determine if they had a more accurate
understanding of the person than of the issue. Looking on the right-hand side of the figure, there is no
difference between general knowledge of the person (M = .80) and of the issue. Subjects did, however,
have a considerably worse understanding of the general aspects of the school (M = .67) than the issue (t =
4.38, p < .001). It appears that people attended quite well to very general information about the policy
and the person, and less so for the school (between-subjects comparison of school to person, t = 3.27, p <
.001).
An identical set of comparisons was made to assess how well subjects understood the specifics of
the policy, the person, and the school. A summary of these are presented in Figure 3. The evidence runs
counter to the hypothesis that the subjects would have a more accurate understanding of the person than
of the policy. Instead, subjects who read either of the vignettes had identical and fairly accurate
understandings of the issue (M = .70), and a significantly less accurate understanding of the person (M =
.63) and the school (M = .56). These differences are real, as within-subject comparisons show (for the
human-interest frame, person to policy comparison, t = 2.86, p < .01; for the person-less frame, school to

19
policy, t = 6.06, p < .001). In addition, the degree to which subjects understood the particulars of the
person more accurately than of the school is meaningful (between-subjects comparison of person to
school, t = 2.81, p < .01).

- Figure 3 here -

Finally, the subjects who did not read a vignette, but read a drier report of the policy after reading
a filler article, had a significantly less accurate understanding of the specifics of the issue (M = .61) than
did those reading vignettes F = 4.33, p < .05). This suggests that, contrary to my hypotheses, the
infusion of a competing attitude object via a narrative helped rather than hindered subjects' efforts to
encode the issue information.
To summarize, support was found for the hypotheses that attitudes about the person in the human
interest frame will influence attitudes about the policy. This appears to be the case for overall approval,
and for biased tendencies. Figure 1 shows a web of connections in the human interest frame that do not
exist in the person-less frame. However, for some subjects there is a connection between one's approval
of the school and approval of the policy.
Regarding understanding of the issue, the hypotheses that the infusion of the person into the
media frame will tend to hurt rather than help the reader are not supported. Quite the opposite was found.
Subjects reading either narrative had a more accurate understanding of the specific items constituting the
issue than those reading no narrative. Further, subjects had a more accurate understanding of the specifics
of the issue than they did of the person or the school. Meanwhile, the fact that subjects consistently had a
better understanding of the person in the story than of the school supports the argument that person and
the policy may be closely connected in memory.

Political Expertise and Issue Attitude Influences

Political sophistication was approximated with a 16-item quiz. Subjects were asked to list the
positions of certain elites, asked to answer political process questions, and asked about the parties and
institutions. This variable, called political knowledge, split the sample into three levels, and was
considered along with the above findings.
No influences of political knowledge are apparent in the way the attitude objects are related.
Subjects of all levels of political knowledge appear to connect the person with the issue, and not the
school. How well one understands the issue, however, is something that is influenced by one's political
expertise.

20
 In all three conditions (human-interest frame, person-less frame, and no narrative) subjects with
higher levels of political knowledge consistently had a more accurate understanding of the specifics of the
issue. The influence is linear and remains when the conditions are collapsed and the entire sample is
considered (for low knowledge, accuracy on the specifics M = .63, for medium, M = .67, and for high
knowledge, M = .74, F[150,2] = 7.24, p < .001). Meanwhile, levels of accuracy about both the general
and specific aspects of both the person and the school were not influenced by one's political expertise.

Attributing Responsibility--Societal or Individual?

Finally, an attempt was made to replicate Iyengar's (1991) findings regarding responsibility,
although with a different method. Subjects were provided a list of eighteen items. From these they were
asked to indicate what they thought was the cause of the problems with public education in New York. In
another section of the survey they were asked about where to start in order to solve the problems. The
eighteen items included political actors (e.g., the governor, the president, school board members),
individuals involved (e.g., students, teachers, administrators), and more societal factors (e.g., communities
and neighborhoods, society in general, political competition).
Differences based on the human-interest frame versus the person-less frame were rare. In the
person-less frame the president was blamed more for causal responsibility (F[1,127] = 4.85, p < .05) as
well as marginally for treatment responsibility (F[1,127] = 3.87, p < .10). Two other comparisons
showed a difference of marginal statistical significance, both blamed as causes: political competition in
the person-less frame, and the school curriculum in the human-interest frame.
Expected patterns did not emerge from these measures, which were not systematically pretested.9
More importantly, the number of statistically significant relationships (1 out of 36 had a p < .05) was
fewer than we would expect to happen by chance. I disregard this portion of the analysis as
indeterminate.
It is possible that notions of responsibility were influenced, but the measures failed to capture
this. It is also possible that in this human-interest story the person was less ordinary than in some others.
She was, after all, an employee of the public school system. Perhaps if the protagonist had been a parent
who was entirely separate from the institutional factors surrounding the issue, notions of individualized
responsibility would have been more pronounced. Regardless, this is an area of the design that deserves
more attention in future studies, especially since it ties most directly to the existing literature.

9
What these measures do offer is a pre-test for the next study. Closer analysis will be done and the method
refined for future use.

21
Limitations
Some limiting aspects of this study should be mentioned. First, it involves only one issue and
past work has shown that influences vary across issue domains (Iyengar 1991, Neuman et al. 1992).
Second, the laboratory lends itself well to isolating influences, but does not approximate the manner in
which people usually learn about political issues. Replication using a video-based stimulus would help.
Exposure to the stimuli over time, and measures of attitude stability and memory decay over time would
also contribute to these findings.
Plans are already drawn for further studies that will include over-time measures of attitudes. In
addition, stop-and-think measures will be employed to add another method of examining the processes
through which people form political attitudes. Also, two more issue domains will be used in the future to
allow some comparison across the substance of the policy.
In everyday politics, as citizens learn about new issues, the absence of political cues is an
exceptional situation. We normally rely on cues, and are provided cues whether we seek them or not.
However, in the lab my goal was to find an issue that was fairly void of those cues in order to examine the
influence of the person in the human interest frame. As I explained above, this is a first step in a longer
research endeavor that will eventually relax this constraint. Finally, non-student subjects will be added in
a study so that I may assess the degree to which older citizens may process new issue information
differently than the younger, student subjects.

DISCUSSION

What role does the person in the human-interest frame play? It appears that attitudes about the
person in the story are tied to attitudes about the issue. And, although the narratives were nearly identical,
the same did not happen in the person-less story about the school. This implies that readers used the
person to help them make sense of the issue. Some readers may have done something similar with
information about the school, but the connection is less clear. Also, it only occurs between subjects'
approval of the issue and school; their biased tendencies are not related to other attitudes.
What does this mean for the normative question regarding the media and their role of informing
citizens about public policy? The use of narratives appears to facilitate learning about a policy. It does
not, however, seem to depend on the person in the story. Rather, it looks like the narrative form itself
may help readers encode the issue information in a way that allows them to understand the policy more

22
accurately. Subjects who read an identical description of the policy without an introductory vignette had
a less accurate understanding of it.
It is not surprising that people consistently had a better understanding of the person than the
school. It does support the notion that the person is attracting some significant amount of attention. This
coupled with the way subjects' dispositions toward the person are tied to dispositions toward the issue are
worth noting. It is possible that the story of Cynthia Wilson evoked sympathy in some readers; then, as
that sympathy increased, their tendency to support the policy increased. For others the teacher may have
appeared like a poor target for sympathy. If they disapproved of her they may have tended to blame her
for the problems described in the story. Following that, they could have felt like sweeping educational
reform was not as obvious or appropriate a solution as firing her or finding a replacement.
This logic follows the Iyengar (1991) work, and was one impetus for my effort to measure ideas
of responsibility. That effort was not successful, and at this point I can do little more than speculate about
the specific thoughts that tie attitudes about the teacher to attitudes about the policy. Although I have
avoided making an argument for a causal direction, the subjects did read about the person (or the school)
first and the issue second. It seems reasonable then to suppose that in many cases subjects formed
evaluations of the teacher before forming judgments about the issue. While the opinions about the person
could have been modified or updated after reading about the policy, it seems more likely that they would
have tended to guide one's evaluation of the policy. So, while it is not my intention to press the case for
causality, it should be pointed out that given the sequence of the stimuli subjects probably tended to use
the person information to shape issue attitudes.
What of the attitudes about the school? Subjects who read the story in the person-less frame
made quite different connections between their approval of the school and approval of the issue. These
were unexpected, but make some sense in retrospect. Among those who approved highly of the school,
they may have felt a type of sympathy for the situation, or deemed the school worthy of help in the form
of 95/5. This follows the same logic outlined above for the human-interest frame, and is fairly obvious.
On the other end of the spectrum, as dispositions about the school got more grim, subjects' support of
95/5 also grew. Why? This may be because they saw the school in dire straits and saw the policy as a
fix. A key difference between the school as the focus of the story versus the teacher is that a teacher can
be fired and replaced. A school, on the other hand, is more static. Passing 95/5 may not have been
perceived as a solution to a poor, inept, or unlikable teacher. But enacting the policy may have been seen
as an apt and appropriate prescription for a school that is ailing and in need of help.
This also ties to a societal or institutional idea of responsibility. And while the measures I used
did not capture these dispositions, we do have Iyengar's (1991) evidence that support this argument. If

23
subjects who disapproved of the teacher, Cynthia Wilson, saw her as a person who was responsible for
the problems described in the article, then they may have been more likely to not see the 95/5 reform as
the best solution. On the other hand, if they saw the school as the source of the problems, then 95/5 could
appear to be a timely and useful alternative.
In the short time it took to take this experiment, knowledge of the issue was facilitated when the
person (or school) were present in the frame. Since both frames facilitated learning in equal fashion, and
since subjects in the condition with no narrative learned less, it is possible that the story is what facilitated
learning. Whether the levels of accurate understanding remain stable over time is an important question.
Studies of candidate evaluation have shown that when the topic is a political candidate the issue
information surrounding the person is forgotten quickly while the overall judgment of the person remains
stable in memory (Lodge, Steenbergen, and Brau 1995). Turning the question around, with the policy as
the focus and the person as an auxiliary attitude object, it would be useful to know which type of
information is retained over time, if any. Future work will address this question.
This bring up the issue of processing style. Figure 3 shows a more accurate level of
understanding for the issue than for the person or the school. This pattern is one that could be expected if
political issues are processed in a memory-based fashion, while persons are processed in an on-line
fashion. Let us suppose, for instance, that attitudes about issues are generally constructed from available
memory (Zaller 1992, Zaller and Feldman 1992). And suppose that attitudes about persons are
constructed on-line, in a process where the details from which a tally is formed may or may not be
retained in memory (Hastie and Park 1986; Hastie and Pennington 1989). Then one's ability to report the
particulars of the issue accurately may be better than one's ability to report particulars of the person. This
could speak to the more accurate understanding of the issue than of the person in the human-interest
frame condition. It does not, however, explain the less accurate understanding of the school.
To take this a bit further, if evaluations of the person preceded attitude formation of the policy,
then among the correlations in Figure 1 two things are of note. First, in the human-interest frame there
are stronger relationships between approval and bias than there are in the person-less frame. This is true
for dispositions toward both the person (approval-to-bias r = .66) and the issue (approval-to-bias r = .63).
While subjects' approval and bias are related in the person-less frame, the connections are weaker for both
the policy (approval-to-bias r = .40) and for the school (approval-to-bias r = .48). This may be more
evidence of how attitudes about the person shape attitudes about the policy. Subjects could have found
judgments of the teacher more easy to form than judgments about the school. It may also explain, at least
partially, the simpler and more consistent linear influence of the person attitudes on the issue attitudes.

24
 Finally, if attitudes about the person shape attitudes about the issue, some concern arises. In
human-interest frames of political policies it becomes important how the person is portrayed by the
various media. Positively portrayed main actors who evoke sympathy may lead to higher rates of
approval for the policy being framed. Meanwhile, thematic or person-less frames may lead to issue
attitudes that are more independent of one's feelings toward the protagonist in a human-interest drama.
From the scant evidence presented above, we might wonder if the preferred frame would be a person-less
drama: In that frame, readers' issue attitudes do not appear to be as dependent on feelings toward the
competing attitude object. And, the readers' understanding of what constitutes the policy is just as
accurate as those reading the human-interest frame. Of course, this was an experiment where subjects
paid close attention to the articles. When citizens read a newspaper or news magazine on a train or in the
family room it is possible that without the person in the story their attention would be fleeting. Stories
without main characters are probably as difficult to tell as they are dry to the ear.
From the body of work establishing the prevalence and complexity of media effects like agenda
setting and priming we know there is a role for "personal experience," in shaping media, public, and
policy agendas (Rogers and Dearing 1988, 557).10 Others have examined the influence of personal
frames more specifically as regards agenda-setting and priming (Iyengar and Kinder 1987), and the more
general malaise in public sentiment toward government and politics (Capella and Hall Jamieson 1997).
What the accumulation of research has shown is that (a) media effects are present, (b) they sometimes
occur under unexpected conditions, and (c) frames that involve persons or personal aspects are often
influential.
In this paper I have tried to step back to ask a more basic question of how the person in the frame
influences one's learning about political issues. It seems worthwhile to follow Iyengar's (1991) inquiry by
adding the two additional dependent variables--accuracy and bias. Another goal of this project is to add
some empirical scrutiny on a subset of what Bennett (1988) calls personalized news stories. This study is
one modest step in that attempt to extend the framing literature by focusing on the role of the person in
the human-interest frame.

10
For a more recent survey of the agenda-setting research see, also, Kosicki, Gerald M. 1993. "Problems
and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research." Journal of Communication 43(2): 100-127.

25
 Table 1. Subjects' Partisan and Ideological Perceptions
of Two Attitude Objects*

Proportion of subjects who associated the issue or person with

ISSUE PERSON

N = 165 N = 64
liberals 39% (64) 33% (21)
conservatives 20% (33) 8% (5)
could be either 39% (64) 59% (38)
missing 2% (4) -

Democrats 38% (63) 30% (19)

Republicans 22% (36) 6% (4)
could be either 37% (61) 64% (41)
missing 3% (5) -

_____________________________________________________________________________

* The questions were:

"The policy you read about sounds like something that would be promoted by (a) conservatives,
(b) liberals, (c) could be promoted by either conservatives or liberals."
and
"The policy you read about sounds like something that would be promoted by (a) Republicans,
(b) Democrats, (c) could be promoted by either Republicans or Democrats."

26
 Table 2. How Person Attitudes Relate to Issue Attitudes
OLS Regression Estimates

human-interest frame person-less frame

approval of the person/school .29 ** .02

(0 to 1) (.11) (.11)

income .02 .10

(0 to 1) (.08) (.10)

age in years -.004 -.03 *

(.003) (.01)

education -.18 .39

(0 to 1) (.16) (.27)

city dweller -.007 .08

(1 = NYC resident; 0 = others) (.06) (.14)

party (Dem to Repub) .11 -.08

(5 categories, 0 to 1) (.11) (.13)

ideology (lib to cons) -.01 -.01

(3 categories, 0 to 1) (.04) (.04)

constant .64 ** 1.18 **

(.11) (.22)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
adjusted R-squared .12 .05

model fit (F) 2.17 * 1.42

N 62 57

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dependent variable is approval of the policy, 95/5, and is coded 0-1
values are unstandardized beta coefficients (standard errors in parentheses)
* = p < .05, ** = p < .01

27
 Figure 1. Linear Relations Between Approval and Bias
for the Three Attitude Objects

Overall Approval Positive Bias

r = .66**
Person Person

r = .30*
human-
interest r = .34** r = .08
+
frame r = .23

r = .63**
Issue Issue
r = .40**

r = .05
person-less r = -.07 r = .05
frame
r = .02

School School
r = .48**

_____________________________________________________________________________
Approval of the issue and the school are related but non-linear.

The top half of this figure represents the human-interest frame, and the bottom half represents the person-
less frame. N size ranges from 60 to 66.

Solid lines indicate a positive correlation. Broken lines indicate no statistical linear relationship.
+ = p < .10
* = p < .05
** = p < .01

28
 Table 3. Curvilinear Relationship between School Approval and Issue Approval

person-less frame

approval of the school -.83 *

(0 to 1) (.37)

approval of the school squared .98 *

(.40)

income .10
(0 to 1) (.09)

age in years -.02 *

(.01)

education .28
(0 to 1) (.26)

city dweller .02

(1 = NYC resident; 0 = others) (.07)

party (Dem to Repub) -.09

(5 categories, 0 to 1) (.13)

ideology (lib to cons) -.009

(3 categories, 0 to 1) (.13)

constant 1.24 **
(.21)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
adjusted R-squared .14
model fit (F) 2.13 *
N 57
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dependent variable is approval of the policy, 95/5, and is coded 0-1
values are unstandardized OLS beta coefficients (standard errors in parentheses)
* = p < .05, ** = p < .01
____________________________________________________________________________________________

Simple Slope Estimates

approval of school instantaneous effect on Y S.E. t ratio

at the mean (.437) .027 .105 .26
at the mean + 1 S.D. (.666) .478 .212 2.26
at the mean - 1 S.D. (.208) -.424 .214 -1.98

df = 49; for p < .05 critical t 2.02; for p < .10, critical t 1.68

If the curvilinear relationship is modeled as Y = $1 X1 + $2X12 as in the above regression,

then the effect of X on Y at a given X value is $1 + 2$2X1

29
 Figure 2. Accuracy of Subjects'
Understanding--General
LEVEL OF ACCURACY (0-1) 1

0.9
.82
0.8 .80 .80 human interest
,80 frame
person-less
0.7
.67 frame
no narrative
0.6

0.5
issue person /
school

ATTITUDE OBJECTS
_________________________________________________________________________

See text for an explanation of the scale measuring general understanding.

N for human-interest frame = 67

N for person-less frame = 64
N for no narrative condition = 33

30
 Figure 3. Accuracy of Subjects'
Understanding--Specifics
1

0.9
LEVEL OF ACCURACY (0-1)

0.8
human interest
.70
frame
0.7 person-less
.70
frame
.63
0.6 .61 no narrative
.56
0.5
issue person /
school

ATTITUDE OBJECTS

_________________________________________________________________________________

See text for an explanation of the scale measuring specific understanding.

N for human-interest frame = 67

N for person-less frame = 64
N for no narrative condition = 33

31
 Appendix A
Human Interest Frame, person described in mostly positive terms. (The text was formatted in columns,
then cut and pasted to appear as if clipped from articles)

Teacher's Struggle To Benefit from "95/5" Proposal?

_____________________

By RICHARD F. ALLEN
_______________

SCOTTSBURG, NEW YORK -- In a noisy classroom packed with 35 second-graders Cynthia Wilson tries to keep order.
Cynthia teaches at Scottsburg Elementary School, a public school in the New York State system. She tries daily to meet the
challenge of offering a good learning experience by approaching things in an intelligent manner, and by striving to set a good
example for her students. But today it's difficult.
Cynthia teaches in a school that is overcrowded and under-funded, with no help in sight. "I think I under-stand my students and
their needs pretty well," she says, "and in the classroom I'm careful to be fair in dealing with them." But Cynthia is frustrated.
Although she is a teacher who commands respect from her peers, tries to be true to her morals, and to show kindness toward
others in the school, her time and energy are running short. Ms. Wilson has only been teaching a few years, and so she has little
experience to draw on.
_______________

(Continued on Page B7)

"95/5" for New York Schools?

__________________

(Continued From Page B1)

______________

In her last round of job evaluations Cynthia was criticized for showing no clear sense of direction, and was told that at times
she comes across as reckless. Still, Cynthia Wilson states: "I care an awful lot about others, and I try to show compassion for my
students and my coworkers." These may be trying times, but Cynthia is not giving up.
The scene is all too common across the state: too many students per classroom, too few teachers per school, and resources that
are stretched too thin. New York State's public schools lack sorely needed funds. But some people are trying to change things.
A new policy called "95/5: The Educational Efficiency Act" is being proposed.
The goal of the policy is to reduce the cost of administration in public schools. Proponents of "95/5" argue that it would
mandate that state educational funds be efficiently spent, that it would increase the effectiveness of public schools, and that it
would decrease the student-to-teacher ratio, all without adding any additional taxes.
How does it work? Well, "95/5" would require schools to spend a minimum of 95% of their budgets on things that directly
benefit the students (for example, teachers, classroom supplies, school facilities). It would limit the amount that schools may
spend on things that do not directly benefit students to 5% of their budgets (for example, administrative offices and personnel
located outside the schools).
Then, all New York State public school districts would be required to publish their budgets annually, and to demonstrate how
their on-site expenses (those spent in the schools) benefit the students directly. School districts failing to meet the minimum
percentage required to be spent on students and classrooms would be fined. Proponents say this would make school districts
more account-able to the citizens of New York by requiring an audit of their budgets every five years.
"95/5: The Educational Efficiency Act" would give the State of New York greater decision making authority over public
schools. And it would guarantee that any additional new dollars for public education would go to schools and classrooms first.
As of this printing, our editorial board has reserved their opinion on "95/5." However, we will be tracking its political status in
order to keep you informed of its progress. While all New Yorkers would like to see Cynthia Wilson get some help in terms of
smaller classroom sizes, and reasonable salary, it's not yet clear that "95/5" is the best answer.
______________

32
Human Interest Frame, person described in mostly negative terms.

Teacher Losing Struggle: "95/5" the Answer?

_____________________

By RICHARD F. ALLEN
_______________

SCOTTSBURG, NEW YORK -- In a noisy classroom packed with 35 second-graders Cynthia Wilson tries to keep order.
Cynthia teaches at Scottsburg Elementary School, a public school in the New York State system. She tries daily to meet the
challenge of offering a good learning experience by approaching things in an intelligent manner, but she fears she may be setting
a bad example for her students. It has become too difficult.
Cynthia teaches in a school that is overcrowded and under-funded, with no help in sight. "I think I under-stand my students and
their needs pretty well," she says, "but in the classroom I've caught myself being unfair in dealing with them." Clearly, Cynthia
is frustrated.
As a teacher, she's losing the respect of her peers, some of whom say she lacks moral guidance and doesn't show much kindness
toward others in the school. She says she always feels short on time and energy. Ms. Wilson has only been teaching a few years,
and so she has little experience to draw on.
_______________

(Continued on Page B7)

"95/5" for New York Schools?

__________________

(Continued From Page B1)

______________

In her last round of job evaluations Cynthia was criticized for showing no clear sense of direction, and was told that at times
she comes across as reckless. Still, Ms. Wilson states: "I care an awful lot about others; I just can't always show compassion for
my students and my coworkers." These are trying times, and Cynthia is beginning to give up.
The scene is all too common across the state: too many students per classroom, too few teachers per school, and resources that
are stretched too thin. New York State's public schools lack sorely needed funds. But some people are trying to change things.
A new policy called "95/5: The Educational Efficiency Act" is being proposed.
The goal of the policy is to reduce the cost of administration in public schools. Proponents of "95/5" argue that it would
mandate that state educational funds be efficiently spent, that it would increase the effectiveness of public schools, and that it
would decrease the student-to-teacher ratio, all without adding any additional taxes.
How does it work? Well, "95/5" would requires schools to spend a minimum of 95% of their budgets on things that directly
benefit the students (for example, teachers, classroom supplies, school facilities). It would limit the amount that schools may
spend on things that do not directly benefit students to 5% of their budgets (for example, administrative offices and personnel
located outside the schools).
Then, all New York State public school districts would be required to publish their budgets annually, and to demonstrate how
their on-site expenses (those spent in the schools) benefit the students directly. School districts failing to meet the minimum
percentage required to be spent on students and classrooms would be fined. Proponents say this would make school districts
more account-able to the citizens of New York by requiring an audit of their budgets every five years.
"95/5: The Educational Efficiency Act" would give the State of New York greater decision making authority over public
schools. And it would guarantee that any additional new dollars for public education would go to schools and classrooms first.
As of this printing, our editorial board has reserved their opinion on "95/5." However, we will be tracking its political status in
order to keep you informed of its progress. While all New Yorkers would like to see Cynthia Wilson get some help in terms of
smaller classroom sizes, and reasonable salary, it's not yet clear that "95/5" is the best answer.

33
Person-less Frame, school described in mostly positive terms.

"95/5" Education Proposal Under Consideration

_____________________

By RICHARD F. ALLEN
_______________

SCOTTSBURG, NEW YORK -- In a noisy classroom packed with 35 desks the challenge is to try and keep order. The scene is
Scottsburg Elementary School, a public school in the New York State system. The stated goals and objectives of the school are
to meet the challenge of offering a good learning experience by approaching things in an intelligent manner, and by setting good
examples. But these days it's difficult.
The school is overcrowded and under-funded, with no help in sight. "The classroom should be a place of understanding, where
needs are appreciated," reads the mission statement of the school, "and needs should be dealt with in a fair manner." But that
mission is a frustrated one.
Although Scottsburg Elementary is respected among schools in the district as a place where morals are valued and kindness
toward others is promoted, time and energy are in short supply. The school has been in existence for only a few years, and so
lacks experience to draw on.
_______________

(Continued on Page B7)

"95/5" for New York Schools?

__________________

(Continued From Page B1)

______________

In the last round of district evaluations the school's policies were criticized for showing no clear sense of direction, and for, at
times, coming across as reckless. Still, a press release from Scottsburg Elementary states: "We care an awful lot about others,
and we try to show com-passion for everyone involved." These may be trying times, but Scottsburg Elementary is not giving up.
The scene is all too common across the state: too many students per classroom, too few teachers per school, and resources that
are stretched too thin. New York State's public schools lack sorely needed funds. But some people are trying to change things.
A new policy called "95/5: The Educational Efficiency Act" is being proposed.
The goal of the policy is to reduce the cost of administration in public schools. Proponents of "95/5" argue that it would
mandate that state educational funds be efficiently spent, that it would increase the effective-ness of public schools, and that it
would decrease the student-to-teacher ratio, all without adding any additional taxes.
How does it work? Well, "95/5" would require schools to spend a minimum of 95% of their budgets on things that directly
benefit the students (for example, teachers, classroom supplies, school facilities). It would limit the amount that schools may
spend on things that do not directly benefit students to 5% of their budgets (for example, administrative offices and personnel
located outside the schools).
Then, all New York State public school districts would be required to publish their budgets annually, and to demonstrate how
their on-site expenses (those spent in the schools) benefit the students directly. School districts failing to meet the minimum
percentage required to be spent on students and classrooms would be fined. Proponents say this would make school districts
more account-able to the citizens of New York by requiring an audit of their budgets every five years.
"95/5: The Educational Efficiency Act" would give the State of New York greater decision making authority over public
schools. And it would guarantee that any additional new dollars for public education would go to schools and classrooms first.
As of this printing, our editorial board has reserved their opinion on "95/5." However, we will be tracking its political status in
order to keep you informed of its progress. While all New Yorkers would like to see Scottsburg Elementary get some help in
terms of smaller classroom sizes, and reasonable salary, it's not yet clear that "95/5" is the best answer.
________________

34
Person-less Frame, school described in mostly negative terms.

"95/5" Education Proposal Under Consideration

_____________________

By RICHARD F. ALLEN
_______________

SCOTTSBURG, NEW YORK -- In a noisy classroom packed with 35 desks the challenge is to try and keep order. The scene is
Scottsburg Elementary School, a public school in the New York State system. The school's stated goals and objectives are, "to
meet the challenge of offering a good learning experience by approaching things in an intelligent manner." But some fear that
bad examples are being set. These days it's difficult.
The school is overcrowded and under-funded, with no help in sight. "The classroom should be a place of understanding, where
needs are appreciated," reads the mission statement of the school. But some say that needs are not dealt with in a fair manner.
Clearly, the mission is a frustrated one.
Scottsburg Elementary is losing the respect of its peers, some of whom say that the school is a place where moral guidance and
kindness toward others are notably missing. Time and energy are in short supply, and since the school has been in existence for
only a few years it lacks experience to draw on.
_______________

(Continued on Page B7)

"95/5" for New York Schools?

__________________

(Continued From Page B1)

______________

In the last round of district evaluations the school's policies were criticized for showing no clear sense of direction, and for, at
times, coming across as reckless. Still, a press release from Scottsburg Elementary states: "We care an awful lot about others;
it's just impossible to always show compassion for everyone." These are trying times, and Scottsburg Elementary is beginning to
give up.
The scene is all too common across the state: too many students per classroom, too few teachers per school, and resources that
are stretched too thin. New York State's public schools lack sorely needed funds. But some people are trying to change things.
A new policy called "95/5: The Educational Efficiency Act" is being proposed.
The goal of the policy is to reduce the cost of administration in public schools. Proponents of "95/5" argue that it would
mandate that state educational funds be efficiently spent, that it would increase the effectiveness of public schools, and that it
would decrease the student-to-teacher ratio, all without adding any additional taxes.
How does it work? Well, "95/5" would requires schools to spend a minimum of 95% of their budgets on things that directly
benefit the students (for example, teachers, classroom supplies, school facilities). It would limit the amount that schools may
spend on things that do not directly benefit students to 5% of their budgets (for example, administrative offices and personnel
located outside the schools).
Then, all New York State public school districts would be required to publish their budgets annually, and to demonstrate how
their on-site expenses (those spent in the schools) benefit the students directly. School districts failing to meet the minimum
percentage required to be spent on students and classrooms would be fined. Proponents say this would make school districts
more account-able to the citizens of New York by requiring an audit of their budgets every five years.
"95/5: The Educational Efficiency Act" would give the State of New York greater decision making authority over public
schools. And it would guarantee that any additional new dollars for public education would go to schools and classrooms first.
As of this printing, our editorial board has reserved their opinion on "95/5." However, we will be tracking its political status in
order to keep you informed of its progress. While all New Yorkers would like to see Scottsburg Elementary get some help in
terms of smaller classroom sizes, and reasonable salary, it's not yet clear that "95/5" is the best answer.

35
 Appendix B

Below is a portion of the actual ballot initiative, Prop. 223.

PROPOSED LAW

EDUCATIONAL EFFICIENCY INITIATIVE

SECTION 1. Part 26.2 (commencing with Section 46650) is added to the Education Code, to read:

PART 26.2. EDUCATIONAL EFFICIENCY INITIATIVE

Chapter 1. Designation

46650. This act shall be known as the California Educational Efficiency Act.

Chapter 2. Purpose

46651. It is the intent of this initiative to require that no less than ninety-five cents ($0.95) of each dollar
appropriated for elementary and secondary public education be contributed in an accountable manner to
the academic value of the actual in-school educational experience of pupils so that ninety-five cents
($0.95) of each dollar is spent on direct services to pupils, schoolsite employees, and school facilities. It is
the further intent of this initiative to do all of the following:

(a) To reduce the cost of non-school administration in public schools.

(b) To mandate that existing state educational funds be efficiently spent to educate our children.

(c) To allow increased school effectiveness without additional taxes.

(d) To allow a decrease in student/teacher ratio without additional taxes.

(e) To guarantee that any additional new funding for public education will go to schools and classrooms
first.

(f) To increase the accountability of the school districts to the citizens of California.

(g) To sanction school districts that fail to be efficient.

(h) To give the community greater decisionmaking authority over their schools.

36
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