The Design of Voting Advice Applications

Abstract

From Europe to Oceania, and East Asia to the Americas, Voting Advice Application (VAAs) are the ubiquitous online tools that inform potential voters about the policy positions of parties and candidates. What makes a good Voting Advice Application (VAA) though? This panel invites papers that address this very question by looking at the relationship between VAA design (e.g. question wording, method of matching voters to parties/candidates) on the one hand and the quality of the VAA "advice" or efficacy in terms of their aim (e.g. increase in political knowledge) on the other. Theoretically informed and methodological contributions, from field and laboratory experiments to the analysis of survey and VAA-generated data, as well as studies presenting novel approaches to VAA design are particularly welcome.​