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Measuring the Rural Continuum in Political Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2021

Zoe Nemerever Open the ORCID record for Zoe Nemerever [Opens in a new window]  and
Melissa Rogers Open the ORCID record for Melissa Rogers [Opens in a new window]
Zoe Nemerever*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA. Email: znemerev@ucsd.edu
Melissa Rogers
Affiliation:
Division of Politics and Economics, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, USA. Email: melissa.rogers@cgu.edu
*
Corresponding author Zoe Nemerever
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Abstract

Recent accounts of American politics focus heavily on urban–rural gaps in political behavior. Rural politics research is growing but may be stymied by difficulties defining and measuring which Americans qualify as “rural.” We discuss theoretical and empirical challenges to studying rurality. Much existing research has been inattentive to conceptualization and measurement of rural geography. We focus on improving estimation of different notions of rurality and provide a new dataset on urban–rural measurement of U.S. state legislative districts. We scrutinize construct validity and measurement in two studies of rural politics. First, we replicate Flavin and Franko (2020, Political Behavior, 845–864) to demonstrate empirical results may be sensitive to measurement of rural residents. Second, we use Mummolo and Nall’s (2017, The Journal of Politics, 45–59) survey data to show rural self-identification is not well-captured with objective, place-based classifications, suggesting a rethinking of theoretical and empirical accounts of rural identity. We conclude with strategies for operationalizing rurality using readily available tools.

Keywords

measurement validityruralitypolitical geographymodifiable areal unit problem
Type
Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 267 - 286
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology

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Footnotes

Edited by Jeff Gill

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