UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Two graduate students in the College of the Liberal Arts will use data from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s Mood of the Nation Poll to enhance their research this summer, thanks to funding from the Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial Graduate Scholarship.

Mary Kruk, a doctoral student in psychology and women’s gender, and sexuality studies; and Joe Phillips, a political science doctoral student, will spend the summer conducting research on the McCourtney Institute for Democracy's Mood of the Nation Poll, an open-ended public opinion poll that seeks to understand why Americans feel the way they do about politics and current events.

Phillips graduated summa cum laude from SUNY Purchase in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in political science and has spent the past year serving as data manager of the poll. In that role, he oversees undergraduate students who code the poll’s responses and resolves any discrepancies among coders.

Phillips said the scholarship will enable him to conduct a more thorough analysis of a November 2018 poll that asked Republicans and Democrats to see things from the other party’s point of view.

“This particular area of research is relatively new, and for the most part, people have looked at psychological constructs and historical trends to explain why partisan tensions have risen,” Phillips said. “However, there is comparatively little on the types of thoughts ordinary partisans have about one another that drive that disdain, and differences in those thoughts between people. Perhaps Democrats are angry at Republicans for different reasons than Republicans are at Democrats.”

Kruk received her bachelor’s degree in women’s studies from the University of Michigan in 2017. Her research examines the experiences of people with stigmatized identities, particularly women and sexual minorities.

Working on the Mood of the Nation Poll this summer will give Kruk valuable experience working with national data and allow her to explore her research questions in a new way.

“I would like to evaluate how the same words/phrases can mean entirely different things to different groups,” she said. “For example, what does it mean when a conservative says they care about ‘women's rights’ versus when a liberal says it? What are the differences in policy support from people who claim to care about the same thing?”

Susan Welch, dean of the College of the Liberal Arts and a longtime admirer of Eleanor Roosevelt, created the scholarship last year to support liberal arts graduate students working with the McCourtney Institute for Democracy. Welch is a leading scholar in political science. She has authored more than 170 scholarly articles, seven monographs, and three textbooks, and she has been recognized as one of the most cited political scientists of her generation.