Methodological and Practical Challenges to Measuring Political Ideology and Preferences |
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| Coordinator 1 | Ms Kelsey Starr (Pew Research Center) |
Recent trends in Europe, such as terrorist threats, economic uncertainty and large-scale immigration, have drastically shifted the overall political landscape. For many, the traditional understanding of left- and right-wing ideologies do not hold as much merit as “populist” or “mainstream” ideologies – terms whose definitions are new at best and inconsistent at worst. While some of the most prominent examples of European populism have been connected to conservative policies, such as the Brexit vote and the success of the German AfD party, populism is not only connected to conservatism. For example, Podemos in Spain (a left-wing party) received 21% of the national vote in 2016.
Public opinion research consistently uses political affiliation as both an important analytical variable and as a statistical control. But with rising dissatisfaction with the status quo on both the political left and right, currently used measures of political affiliation and ideology run the risk of holding less statistical power overall. How can researchers best ask about political preferences while also tapping into populist ideologies that can transcend political ones?
The purpose of this panel is to explore recent methodological challenges, experiments and innovations about how to best ask respondents about their political ideologies. The panel incorporates ideas about political parties, the rise in populist ideologies, voting behavior and opinions about the current political climate.
The panel accepts papers that focus on questionnaire development for survey-based research, including survey experiments, cognitive interviews and large-scale projects. Paper topics include, but are not limited to:
• Best practices for understanding political party preference and political ideology
• Cross sections between mainstream political ideology and populist sentiment
• Decreasing item nonresponse
The focus of this panel is not the substantive findings but rather the methodological practices used to achieve them.