The study by Daniel E. Bergan and colleagues at Michigan State University circumvented some of the methodological problems that troubled other studies by randomly assigning legislators to be contacted by a grassroots e-mail lobbying campaign.

"The experiment was conducted in the context of a grassroots lobbying campaign through cooperation with a coalition of groups lobbying a state legislature," the researchers write. "The results show that grassroots lobbying by e-mail has a substantial influence on legislative voting behavior."

The analysis - titled "Does Grassroots Lobbying Work? A Field Experiment Measuring the Effects of an e-Mail Lobbying Campaign on Legislative Behavior" - was recently published in American Politics Research. It suggests several possible extensions of the study's design to other forms of lobbying and other problems in political science. (For more information, contact Daniel E. Bergan, Michigan State University, Dept. of Communicable, East Lansing, Mich., 48824 or visit the American Politics Research website at http://apr.sagepub.com).