ECPR

Install the app

Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.

Just tap Share then “Add to Home Screen”

ECPR

Install the app

Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.

Just tap Share then “Add to Home Screen”

Effects of Measurement-Variants on the Record of Political Knowledge

Elections
Political Methodology
Knowledge
Quantitative
Christian Begemann
Philipps-Universität Marburg
Christian Begemann
Philipps-Universität Marburg
Astrid De Souza
Philipps-Universität Marburg
Bettina Westle
Philipps-Universität Marburg

Abstract

In the research field of political knowledge is a broad consent that ideally citizens in democracies should be well informed about important political facts, thus enabling them to choose a party along a political agenda, which meets their own interests. The measurement of political knowledge is often conducted via standardized questions on e.g. the structure of the political system, party positions or leading politicians. Political knowledge then is usually assessed by counting the amount of correct answers – similar as in school-tests. This is an economical approach when working with surveys. Yet, school-tests are done with different conditions than surveys. Thus, for example, in surveys there might be less motivation to show a good record than in school. And only in school there is no sense in answering “don’t know”, unless wrong answers are sanctioned negatively. In our paper we want to compare variants of question formats, which may lead to different results in the measurement of political competence. Especially we are interested in the effects of the existence vs. absence of a “don’t know”-option and in effects of different numbers of (wrong) answer categories in multiple choice questions. Besides this we can examine to what extent individuals’ characteristics and dispositions (such as age, gender, education, interest in politics) not only affect their objective and subjective levels of political knowledge but also their response behaviour towards the different question formats, thereby generating contortions of results in standardized surveys. With this approach we contribute to the assessment of validity in measuring political knowledge. Our data were gained by online-experiments with the population in voting age before the German national elections in 2013. It is embedded in our research project “Election-Relevant Political Knowledge”, which is headed by Prof. Dr. Bettina Westle and funded by the German Research Association (DFG). Begemann, Rütter, Westle