Polmeth 2011

Princeton University hosted the 2011 Polmeth conference, the annual meeting of political science methodology subsection of the APSA. This was my third Polmeth, and I found the talks to be the most approachable thus far (I think this says more about the presentations than my abilities). I only wish I could have attended the other talks during the split sessions, but one can only be in one room at a time (similarly, I could not visit many graduate student poster presentations while presenting my own).

My poster was titled “ACE in the Hole: A constructive critique of classical twins studies.” While there has been a steady stream of research linking genetic predispositions to political behavior, this research has not been well integrated into the broader political behavior literature. In part, I suspect this is because of the model most frequently employed in classical twin studies. The use of the so-called “ACE” model requires strong assumptions and does not directly engage the models and outcomes of other political science research. This poster attempts to layout a path where by the logic of the natural experiment embodied in twin studies can be used to simplify the analysis in a way that more directly engages traditional political science studies.

I’ve put my poster and the supporting materials online. I thank the UNL PolPhy Lab and the original data collectors for publishing the data I use in the poster.