The Secondary Consequences of Conducting Polls in Political Science Classes: A Quasi-Experimental Test

Abstract

local community are altered by their participation as interviewers in a public opinion poll. Our results suggest that students do not benefit from this type of experience and lead us to question the use of some forms of experiential learning. We end with a call for more systematic research demonstrating the proposed benefits of experiential learning. Experiential learning is widely used in political science and other disciplines (Kendall et al. 1996). Teachers who use experiential learning in their instruction rarely doubt its efficacy and often recommend its use (see, e.g., Chesney and Feinstein 1993; McBride 1994; Seitz 1994). Students are believed to benefit in