Пересказ текста

Пересказ текста

The data for the research were gathered through a nationwide random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted from November 29 through December 21, 2000. In addition to the national respondents, oversamples of the residents of the state Texas and Harris County (Houston) were included in the sample. 730 respondents took part in this analysis. Only those who indicated support for the death penalty and those who indicated that they were not sure whether they supported the death penalty, received the complete battery of questions. The stimulus the set of 28 intervening questions, all of which were related to capital punishment.
As the research had two objectives (the first: to examine the extent of the stability of attitudes about the fair application of the death penalty; the second: to evaluatethe directional effect of increasing the number of these pertinent considerations), there were two main findings. In terms of the first objective, those results suggested that there was instability in attitudes regarding the fair application of capital punishment within that context. The amount of instability is substantial, and this finding challenged long-standing conceptions about the stability of death penalty attitudes. In terms of the second objective, these findings provided evidence that a significant proportion of those who exhibited instability in their attitudes indicated that they believed the death penalty was less fairly applied after the pool of pertinent considerations was enlarged. In author’s opinion, these findings were especially notable given a number of characteristics of the sample and survey instrument.