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Estimating Individuals’ Political Perceptions While Adjusting for Differential Item Functioning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2020

Stephen A. Jessee Open the ORCID record for Stephen A. Jessee [Opens in a new window]
Stephen A. Jessee*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Austin, Government, 1 University Station A1800, Austin, TX 78712-1139, USA. Email: sjessee@utexas.edu
*
*Email: sjessee@utexas.edu
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Abstract

Questions about people’s perceptions of politicians or other political actors are of central interest in a wide variety of research areas. But measuring these perceptions is difficult in part because respondents may use survey response scales in different ways. In a classic article, Aldrich and McKelvey (1977) introduce a method adjusting for such differential item functioning by assuming that all respondents perceive political stimuli identically. I propose a modeling approach built on the Aldrich and McKelvey framework but incorporating anchoring vignettes. This approach allows for scale use adjustments without assuming that all respondents perceive a given politician identically. I apply this model to data on Americans’ perceptions of parties, elected officials, and other political actors, showing that, contrary to previous arguments, most variation in ideology ratings is due not to differing scale use, but to differences in underlying perceptions. Specifically, while perceptions of Republican politicians and the Republican party show no significant differences by respondent partisanship, Democratic and Republican respondents differ strongly in their perceptions of the ideology of Democratic political actors as well as the Supreme Court.

Keywords

ideology scoresBayesian analysislatent variables
Type
Articles
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology.

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Footnotes

Contributing Editor: Jeff Gill

References

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