This following story is the fifth installment of the Political Science in Arkansas interview series, where we profile political scientists throughout the state. Today, we talk to Janine Parry, an expert on elections, opinion research, state and local politics, and women in politics and policy. She works as Professor of Political Science and Director of the Arkansas Poll at the University of Arkansas; she received her PhD in political science from Washington State University. Her publications include two books — Women’s Rights in the USA and Readings in Arkansas Politics and Government — as well as articles and chapters published in Political Behavior, State Politics and Policy Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, the Journal of Black Studies, and the Presidential Elections in the South series. She serves on the Editorial Board for State Politics and Policy Quarterly and recently organized the state politics panels for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. She was awarded Fulbright College’s Master Teacher Award in 2002 and the university-wide Alumni Association Awards for both teaching and service in 2005. She served as co-director of the Teaching and Faculty Support Center at the University of Arkansas from 2008-2011, Chair of the Campus Faculty from 2012-2013; and Chair of the Faculty Senate from 2013-2014. In 2015, the Teaching Academy awarded her its Imhoff Award for Outstanding Teaching and Student Mentorship, and in 2016, she won the University of Arkansas’s highest teaching honor: the Charles and Nadine Baum Faculty Teaching Award.
What made you want to study political science, opinion research, and state and local politics?
A great professor of course! I started college at Western Washington University in 1989 as a journalism major, aspiring to be a nationally-syndicated like Ellen Goodman. I remained on that trajectory for two years until I took American National Government with Professor Don Alper. He (somehow!) assigned us a 10-page research paper. As a consequence, I ended discovering miraculous source of information: the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report. I read several years’ worth of issues (in giant three-ring binders in the reference section) about a proposed hike to the national gasoline tax. Dr. Alper called me to his office after reading my proposal. It was a huge class; I knew I’d exceeded the length and was prepared to be scolded about reading the instructions. Instead, he praised it as exceptional and encouraged me to switch majors. I did!
How has the pandemic impacted you professionally? Has it changed the way you have thought about or done teaching or researching?
The pandemic has made it clearer than ever that I draw tremendous energy and joy from a roomful of students. I recently allowed myself to think – thanks to the vaccine rollouts – that I probably would be back in a lecture hall filled with chattering students this fall, and that for most of us it would be among our first large gatherings in more than a year. The hope of that brought tears to my eyes.
What advice would you give to faculty teaching introductory courses (like American National Government) who have to teach opinion polling to the math-averse and the methodologically-uninitiated students?
Be sympathetic and concrete. Use examples likely to interest them. And use visuals. Oh, and something I have to remind myself again and again and AGAIN: stop talking and let them process what you’re showing them.
What advice would you give graduate students and young faculty going into careers studying and teaching opinion research?
This may seem contradictory, but I think it’s compatible: first, don’t be intimated by the acronyms, new statistical techniques, or fast-talking mumbo jumbo of others … it’s often a cover for a still tenuous grasp of fundamentals. Second, seek out people with newer, flashier methodological skills than yours … it will help you get published.
You have won several teaching awards at the University of Arkansas. What do you think makes a good political science teacher? What advice would you give political science teachers in being successful?
My thinking about this has changed over the decades. But there are two central constants. First, there is no substitute for strong command of the material. I read a lot – both news and scholarship – and I read with the intention of successfully conveying the idea to another person. That noted, it also helps to engage with the broader culture, so I can use examples – even simple expressions – with which regular people can identify. Most of the time, we are preparing citizens, not political scientists. Comparing the law-making process to a game of “Chutes and Ladders” makes the idea accessible to both future accountants and 7th grade science teachers. Likewise, encouraging an overwhelmed thesis writer to be like Frozen’s Anna and just “do the next right thing,” seems to engender trust and, hopefully, genuine inspiration.
Also, I’ve found it helps be a student as often as I can and to THINK about myself that way. From colleagues making presentations at conferences, to my campus yoga teacher, to this month’s Master Gardner speaker… they are all, if unwittingly, my teaching coaches.
Are there any pollsters or resources that you follow to understand state-wide and national voter trends?
The Pew Charitable Trust, for me, is the gold standard … for conducting, presenting, and applying public opinion to big picture policy questions, not election prediction. They also fulfill my transparency dreams. They are the model to which I wish everyone would aspire.
What have you learned about Arkansas politics in your role collecting voter data at the University of Arkansas?
The central thing I’ve learned from building a database of 20,000 interviews is that Arkansans aren’t that different from the rest of the country. Our population is poorer, whiter, older, and less educated on average than most other states and our election outcomes/policy directions reflect it. But that’s not “an Arkansas thing,” it’s a demography thing.
Do you feel that Arkansas is now solidly a Republican state, or are there any possible blue or third party disruptions on the horizon?
Until central Arkansas or northwest Arkansas grows into a major metropolitan area large and diverse enough to offset the status quo preferences of the state’s still-strong small town and rural populations, it will remain among the most solidly Republican in the country.
Do you think transparency is an issue in opinion research, and political science? How so? Who do you think does a better job of being transparent in their polling methods and data? How so?
Yes! If I can’t tell with just a click or two what questions were asked, of whom, in what time period, and using what platform, I’m not interested.
Over your career, have your views on how voter behavior works and how it can be measured changed?
Yes, but this change is a product of personal experience … navigating the politics of my department, university, and community … more than scholarly observation. What I’ve come to understand is that most people feel before they think, even think because they feel. And as that wondrous book by Lodge and Tabor demonstrates, academics are not immune to this, we just have fancier tools to make it appear we are relying on logic instead of instinct and, frankly, bias.
How has gender informed your study of voter behavior and politics?
As someone interested in gender and politics, I notice when it’s both absent as a variable and when it’s relied upon uncritically … without considering, for example, the stronger influences of partisanship, economics, and education.
Do you feel that gender gets taken seriously in opinion research?
Yes, finally, although the emphasis on women as the only group to be examined makes me twitchy. The gender gap in candidate preferences, for example, for decades was discussed as something women were doing, a phenomenon they were creating with their changes in their policy preferences. Actually, it was white men’s abandonment of Democratic candidates for Republican ones that played the largest role in creating that gap. When a handful of analysts finally started talking about NASCAR dads during the Bush administration, they were speaking my language.
Does the importance of gender require us to take seriously intersectional analysis (that looks at how gender works in different ways across class, racial, and ethnic lines)?
Yes, and those discussions have been under-appreciated for so long, it has been a relief to see them getting traction in recent years. That said, my students – and the public in general (at least its liberal members) – seem so eager now to grapple with these other categories, they seem to have forgotten what they are intersecting with: sex and gender. My liberal white students in particular – who suddenly are passionately determined to draw attention to the deplorable life situations of black trans women – seem surprised (even bored) to learn that paid sick/family leave, still the exception not the rule in the U.S., is a central cause of wealth disparity for ALL women as compared with ALL men. For me, it’s a signal that sex and gender remain so deeply imbedded in existing social hierarchies, in our own relationships and experiences, we cannot yet the many ways they are yet expressed in our world.
You have also taught and researched State and Local Politics. What innovations do you see in teaching and researching this topic?
I’ve only recently returned to teaching this class and have fallen in love with it again! There are so many examples and sources (e.g., Stateline.org) on which to draw from all over the country and even other countries when it comes to measuring, comparing, and explaining subnational governance. Plus, our hyper-nationalized news environment means students have almost zero pre-existing knowledge or belief about it. We’re working with a blank slate … bad for the republic, in my view, but fun to teach!
How long have you been a member of ArkPSA; what have you gotten out of being a member?
The PLSC chair who hired me at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in 1998, Steven Neuse, made sure I became a member at the 1999 meeting. I have most appreciated interacting with other scholars who teach similar courses with similar students, and to visiting other institutions around the state!
What do you think ArkPSA does well, and what would you like to see the association do in the future?
I like that our organization has a long history of being supportive of scholars at every career stage of inquiry, including students. I also especially enjoy the colleagues willing to geek out with me about Arkansas specifics. I always walk away with new class material!
What future projects, research, or teaching excite you? What do you think you will accomplish professionally in the next twenty years?
I actually am preparing to exit this career, so in addition to tying up loose ends on a few other projects, I finally am actively working on two books I have been wanting to write: one on partisanship in the American states with my colleague Andrew Dowdle and another on women in contemporary southern politics.
I was lucky to start such a stimulating and stable career in my 20s and to land on a campus and in a community that helped me grow as a thinker, as a teacher, and as a person. But it also is a career that is mostly sedentary, and sometimes fraught with puffery. So, when my kids graduate from Fayetteville High School in 2024, I will head back to the Pacific Northwest to work m the state and federal parks. Although I have loved the pulse of a college lecture hall, the mountains are my natural habitat.