Secondary Outcomes (end points)
The first secondary outcome of interest is a measure of general support for school spending. Respondents will be asked: "State legislatures must make choices when making spending decisions on important state programs. Would you like your legislature to increase or decrease spending on education?" Where the choices are "Greatly Increase", "Slightly Increase", "Maintain", "Slightly Decrease", and "Greatly Decrease." We will estimate the impact of the treatment on support for increasing school spending by combining the first two categories ("Greatly increase" and "Slightly Increase") into a single binary measure of support for increasing school spending vs. decreasing or maintaining. We will also examine whether the treatment influences support for decreasing school spending by combining the last two categories ("Greatly Decrease" and "Slightly Decrease") into a single binary measure of support for decreasing school spending vs. increasing or maintaining.
A second set of secondary outcomes are measures of which factors respondents considered as they decided whether to support the school bond. These outcome variables will be constructed from responses to the question, "Which of the following was on your mind as you decided whether to support or oppose the school bond proposition?" Respondents can select all that apply from the following choices: Teacher salaries, school building condition, academic achievement, technology in schools, property taxes, sales taxes, current school spending, overall government spending or the deficit, inflation, my local school board or district leadership, my state's department of education, and something else (write-in response).
A third secondary outcome will be the amount that respondents expect their housing costs (annual property taxes for home owners; monthly rent for renters) to increase by if the bond proposal is successful. Respondents will be asked "How much would you expect your [annual property taxes/monthly rent] to increase if this bond were passed? Please respond using a whole number to represent the approximate increase you expect in U.S. Dollars, rounding to the nearest dollar. Enter 0 if you would not expect your [annual property taxes/monthly rent] to change."
A fourth set of secondary outcomes will assess who respondents believe are supporters of the school bond proposal. All respondents will be asked "Which of the following people and organizations do you think would support SCHOOL DISTRICT PROPOSITION A?" where they can choose as many as apply from "Governor Greg Abbott, Beto O'Rourke, Texas Republicans, Texas Democrats, Texas Parent Teacher Association, Texas Tribune, None of the above." We will construct binary indicators recording whether respondents believe each person or organization would support the bond proposal and collapse the maximum value of individual indicators into partisan groups where "Governor Greg Abbott" and "Texas Republicans" are "conservative"; "Texas Democrats" and "Beto O'Rourke" are "liberal"; and "Texas PTA" and "Texas Tribune" are "non-partisan."
Our analyses of secondary outcomes will test
1) whether there are differences in the average rate of support for school spending between the treatment and control groups;
2) whether our treatment changes the factors that respondents report considering as they decided whether to support the school bond;
3) whether there are differences in the expected change in housing costs between the treatment and control groups (analyzing impacts on home-owners and renters separately and jointly); and
4) whether there are differences in the share of respondents who believe that conservative, liberal, or non-partisan groups would support the school bond proposal between the treatment and control groups.
All secondary analyses will use ordinary least squares regression and control for county size, state, political orientation, and a set of demographic covariates to the extent that they increase precision.