Bridging Data Gaps and Advancing Transparency: The Volebný Kompas Multidisciplinary Approach to VAA Development for the 2023 Slovak Parliamentary Elections

The democratic shifts in post-socialist Europe present a complex electoral tapestry, characterized by rapidly evolving political landscapes and diverse voter preferences. One of the cruxes of contemporary research in this area lies in the significant gap in comprehensive data on voter and political party positions, especially in the context of national elections. To address this challenge, the Volebný Kompas project, built on the euandi platform, emerged as the most prominent — and notably, the only academic — Voting Advice Application (VAA) employed during the snap 2023 Slovak Parliamentary elections. Its design was not only focused on best practices in the collection and sharing of VAA data but also on facilitating a wide array of research interests. Our study highlights two critical concerns in the current state of VAA research: the scarcity of detailed and wide-ranging data capturing the nuanced electorate and political party dynamics in national elections in post-socialist nations, and the prevalent haphazard manner of handling and sharing VAA data. The Volebný Kompas project addresses these challenges head-on with a dual dataset framework. The first dataset includes over 134,000 voter responses from the 2023 snap Slovak Parliamentary Elections, while the second dataset details 429 policy positions from 11 political parties. Together, they provide a granular view of 39 key political, economic, and societal issues. From its inception, the Volebný Kompas project was a multidisciplinary endeavor, based on the collaboration of, among others, political scientists, economists, sociologists and international relations scholars to formulate statements for the VAA. This collaborative approach ensured that the statements were not only polarizing and salient to the elections from the very inception but also relevant to a diverse set of research fields, essentially providing a platform for the involved researchers to integrate statements that were research-wise of direct interest to them and their field. This design enabled us to generate a contextually rich dataset usable across various disciplines. A key aspect of the Volebný Kompas project is also its structured and systematic method of data sharing. We address the fragmented nature of current VAA data handling by advocating for a more organized, accessible, and replicable model of data dissemination. This model is grounded in detailed documentation and adherence to FAIR principles, ensuring that the data is reliable and widely usable. Moreover, the project incorporates robust technical validation to ensure data quality and consistency. This includes rigorous data cleaning as well as structural and content validation, all documented and made openly accessible for replication and adaptation by other researchers. Thus, the Volebný Kompas project not only helps to fill the gap in providing data for understanding various dynamics in post-socialist countries but also suggests ways to improve the sharing of VAA data. In doing so, it serves as a call to action for VAA researchers and designers to adopt a more inclusive, interdisciplinary approach to VAA design, and to implement more robust, systematic approaches in data management. These measures are crucial in enhancing VAAs’ capability to serve as rich data sources for researchers across various domains.