Monday, August 26, 2013

Anthony Gierzynski's (with Kathryn Eddy) "Harry Potter and the Millennials"

Anthony Gierzynski (Jack) is a professor of political science at the University of Vermont and the Director of the James M. Jeffords Center's Vermont Legislative Research Service. He has published three other books in addition to Harry Potter and the Millennials: Saving American Elections: A Diagnosis and Prescription for a Healthier Democracy (2010), Money Rules: Financing Elections in America (2000), and Legislative Party Campaign Committees in the American States (1992), as well as a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals. Kathryn Eddy is a writer (currently for the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus) who lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

Gierzynski applied the “Page 99 Test” to their new book, Harry Potter and the Millennials: Research Methods and the Politics of the Muggle Generation, and reported the following:
Page 99 is in the appendix to the book. The first thing that tells you is that the book is a short one. The second thing it says is that the technical material has been relegated to the appendix in order to make the book highly readable for most all audiences while at the same time showing that the principle conclusions are based on sophisticated research. The page contains the core statistical analysis that bolsters the case that the Harry Potter series affected the attitudes of Millennial fans of the series on a number of political attitudes--including such attitudes as those relating to political tolerance, diversity, the use of violence and deadly force, skepticism, authority, ideology, and vote choices in the 2008 election. The regression analysis results presented on the page show even when controlling for other factors that could explain why Harry Potter fans were different from nonfans--such as whether fans were avid readers before they read the HP series as well as political and demographic characteristics--the relationship between being a fan and the political attitudes found throughout the series remained significant.
Learn more about the book and authors at the official Harry Potter and the Millennials website.

--Marshal Zeringue