Source + Beyond the Source Framework: Topic: Presidential Approval Ratings

To complete the activity, select two sources on the same topic (one from each section). We've included some talking points about each source that you may bring up in the discussion as you're reviewing the information with students.

Feel free to select alternate sources or topics tailored to your session -- the important thing is that both sources you use in the activity are on the same topic, but come from different publications. 

Options for Source #1

How unpopular/popular is Joe Biden? FiveThirtyEight. 

• FiveThirtyEight is a website focused on opinion polls, politics, politics, sports, and science
• can scroll down to see the pollster where the data is coming from
• tells you when the poll was last updated at the top of the page
• can discuss the user-friendliness of the chart and who the intended audience might be
• Ads that pop up on the page
• click the link How this works to learn about their method
  • chart averages data from multiple polls and accounts for poll's quality, sample size, etc.
• If you go to the homepage, and scroll down to the bottom, can click About Us to learn about the website's mission and values
• If you Google FiveThirtyEight, can go on Wikipedia page to learn that the website is owned by Walt Disney Company, with operations run by ABC News

Mansky, Jackie. Inside the Alluring Power of Public Opinion Polls From Elections Past: A digital-savvy historian discusses his popular @HistOpinion Twitter account.  Smithsonian Magazine. 26 September 2016.

• magazine article about a Twitter account that is run by Peter A. Shulman, history professor at Case Western Reserve University
• some links in article go to primary sources and other websites
• interesting to think about how the Twitter account has credibility based off the article - does having a magazine article give it more credibility?
• Tweets embedded in the article that you can click on and explore further
• How does the current state of Twitter effect the credibility of this article, since it was published in 2016?

Options for Source #2

Frank Newport, Lydia Saad, Review: Presidential Job Approval, Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 85, Issue 1, Spring 2021, Pages 223–241, https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfaa061

• Study tracking the evolution of presidential approval rating overtime, showing an increased degree of political polarization in presidential approval rankings. 
• Authors are research scientists at Gallup, a public opinion and market research firm based in Washington, D.C.  Students could Google the organization to learn more about it. 
• Bibliography is a mix of scholarly articles and news sources. 
• Public Opinion Quarterly is a peer reviewed journal edited by the American Association for Public Opinion research and published by Oxford University Press. Go to the website to learn more. 

First source

Second Source