ABSTRACT

A growing body of political science research today involves three things: human subjects, experiments (field, survey), and fieldwork (Druckman et al. 2006, Brady 2000, Kapiszewski, MacLean and Read 2015). This chapter considers a particular body of political science research: experiments providing information to citizens in democracies about their government. Experiments providing information address compelling research questions that relate to the core of political science literature. As many dependent variables in political science are behavioral (e.g., voting, corruption, declaring war, engaging in protest), and behavioral change is challenging to set in motion, the interventions associated with information experiments are often designed to be as strong as possible.