Qualitative Examination of Voting Empowerment and Participation Among People Living With Traumatic Brain Injury.

OBJECTIVE: To examine political participation after traumatic brain injury (TBI). DESIGN: Qualitative, participatory research via interviews and observations. Each participant was interviewed to discuss their experience of voting in 2007 or 2008. Data were coded using Grounded Theory to develop themes, metacodes, and theories. SETTING: Community. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 57 individuals with history of TBI and 28 family members (N=85). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Not applicable. RESULTS: Four themes emerged from the data: (1) people with TBI have barriers to voting; (2) the voting process can be improved for people with TBI; (3) voting is the responsibility of members of society; and (4) voting is one way we have a voice in society. CONCLUSIONS: The data support the importance of voting as an American right regardless of the presence of disability. While persons with TBI report voting represents their freedom and voice, there may be barriers that can threaten or limit their voice.

Eliciting survey cooperation: incentives, self-interest, and norms of cooperation.

Given the weaker ties to community as noted by scholars such as Robert Putnam, survey researchers should not be surprised by a decline in survey participation over the past 10 years. This research analyzes the use of incentives coupled with introductory themes emphasizing cooperation and helpfulness--cooperative norms in American society--to understand their effects on survey response. This article analyzes two separate experiments (one phone and one mail) that provide evidence that norms of cooperation matter in the decision to participate in a survey, suggesting that this is particularly true at the refusal conversion stage. These results indicate that survey researchers may use such themes to their advantage, especially when conducting a nonresponse follow-up in a mail survey.