Contents of Graffiti and Bumper Stickers as Measures of Political Behavior

Abstract

It has been suggested that the content of political bumper stickers mirrors political attitudes. There is also evidence that the content of graffiti reflects the current attitudes of the writer (Jorgenson & Lange, 1975; Landy & Steele, 1967; Sechrest & Flores, 1969; Sechrest & Olson, 1971). This implies that the content of political graffiti could be used to assess political attitudes. To the extent that such attitudes also predict behavior, it was expected that the proportion of bumper stickers and the proportion of political graffiti which support a candidate would be similar to the proportion of people who indicate a verbal preference for that candidate. As a measure of political behavior, voters' preference for each presidential candidate in the 1976 election within the specific population of students at a large western university was determined in two separate surveys (Ns = 160 and 417). The results of both surveys showed a slight margin for Ford. To assess the content of bumper stickers, all cars parked in all student lots at the same university between 8:00 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. both on the day before and on the day of the election were examined and the incidence of cars with one or more bumper stickers supporting each candidate for president was tallied. Of those observed 28 supported Ford and 25 supported Carter. This difference was consistent with the survey of voter preference (x ' = .34, 1 d f ) . In the survey of graffiti all restrooms in 16 classroom buildings at the same university were examined for graffiti one day prior to the election. Graffiti were first judged as either political or nonpolitical, then political graffiti were coded as favorable or unfavorable to a presidential candidate. The percentage of political graffiti which contained favorable statements about Ford (25%) was greater than that for Caner (15%) , a difference which was once again consistent with the results of the voters' preference (Xa = 1.34, 1 d f ) . As expected the contents of both bumper stickers and graffiti show some preliminary promise as measures of behavior, at least political behavior.