Quality research on population subgroups, including racial and ethnic minorities, is impeded by the cost of recruiting and retaining representative samples. To minimize costs, many surveys eschew the practice of ending the survey with demographic questions, and instead begin by asking participants their race and/or ethnicity. These “ethnic filters,” as we refer to them, direct limited resources to reaching and gathering data on the targeted population. However, these questions also cue an identity laden with social, economic and political associations. We develop and test a theory about how identity cues at the beginning of surveys of Latino public opinion affect the political preferences that are reported. Using a population-based survey experiment, we demonstrate that ethnic filter questions affect Latino attitudes across a range of political issues, and suggest new interpretations of Latino public opinion. Our findings offer insights into the effect of explicit identity cues on Latino public opinion, as well as the production and analysis of data on racial, ethnic and other population sub-groups.

Mara Cecilia Ostfeld will be an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science (beginning in September 2016) at the Ford School of Public Policy. Her research broadly focuses on the relationship between race, media and political attitudes. Mara received her PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania and her MPP from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. During national elections, Mara also works as
an analyst at NBC and Telemundo.