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Comment: Choosing Among Indicators of State Public Opinion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Barbara Norrander
Barbara Norrander*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
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Extract

The lively debate between Berry, Ringquist, Fording, and Hanson (2007, hereafter Berry et al.) and Brace, Arceneaux, Johnson, and Ulbig (2004, hereafter Brace et al.) about the measurement of state public opinion is instructive for scholars of many aspects of state politics and policy. Researchers in need of such a measure now have a variety of choices, but as this debate illustrates, these measures are not simply interchangeable nor can they be used without a good deal of theoretical and methodological thought. Each measure is linked to a different component of state public opinion and each has its limitations. In addition, state policies, and changes in state policies, may have different causal links to these measures depending on policy type, kind of policy change, or environmental factors.

Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , Summer 2007 , pp. 152 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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