Thesis Defense
Author: Gabi Gies | Major: Political Science and Psychology | Semester: Spring 2023
My name is Gabi Gies and I am a recent graduate of the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. I studied political science and psychology, as well as minors in Spanish and philosophy, and completed my honors thesis with Dr. Geoboo Song of political science. This semester marks my third period of funding with the Honors College Research Grant. After graduating, I moved to Washington D.C. and am working on Capitol Hill as a Staff Assistant.
After taking Money and Politics (PLSC 4343) with Dr. Karen Sebold and working in a retail pharmacy for most of my high school years, I was interested in looking into the relationship between pharmaceutical lobbying groups and congressional voting actions. There is a common belief amongst Americans that politicians are being bought out by corporate interests, despite most experts in campaign finance agreeing on the opposite. I sought out to determine if there was a statistical correlation between the amount of money a congressional member received from the pharmaceutical industry in campaign donations and their voting actions on legislation that would impact the pharmaceutical market. The findings of this research have clear impacts on the sanctity of American democracy.
I began my project by reaching out to Dr. Geoboo Song, who was the mentor of one of my advisors at the Volunteer Action Center. Dr. Song was excited to mentor me on this project, so we began working on it the spring of my junior year. Across the summer and fall terms of my senior year, we narrowed the scope of our study to include only legislation from the 116th Congress that directly increased regulations on the pharmaceutical industry. This was in order to have clear bounds on what type of legislation we included as well as to limit legislation to the most recent complete Congress at the time of data collection. I also assembled a data set of all member data, including demographic information, amount of campaign contributions received from the top five PACs, and voting actions on three pieces of legislation that fit the criteria for the study.
This semester, I focused on running statistical analyses of the data, including a correlation and regression analysis. After this, I worked with Dr. Song to understand the implications of the data analysis and drafted my thesis. On March 30th, I successfully defended my thesis. Dr. Song was an incredible resource throughout the process of writing my thesis and preparing for my defense. I learned a lot about myself and how to successfully break down a large project into smaller, more manageable tasks, as well as how to eloquently deliver a presentation about something important to me.
Other members of my thesis committee were excellent help as well, including Dr. Kate Chapman, who answered questions about data compilation, as well as Dr. Karen Sebold, who helped me prepare my thesis to be sent in to a journal. Dr. Sebold helped me rewrite my literature review based on her expertise and send it in to the Midwest Political Science Association. Regardless of whether my thesis gets published, I am very grateful for the experience of writing a manuscript and polishing it for potential publication. I could not have completed this project without the help of my amazing faculty mentors, supportive family and friends, and the Honors College Research Grant.