Suchergebnisse

NATIONAL ELECTION SURVEYS IN FRANCE AND IN THE UNITED STATES DO NOT POSE MANY OF THE SAME QUESTIONS, AND THE DOMINANT RESEARCH PARADIGMS IN EACH COUNTRY OFFER OPPOSING EXPLANATORY MODELS OF VOTE CHOICE. THIS ARTICLE REPORTS THE PRELIMINARY RESULTS FROM A JOINT EFFORT OF U.S. AND FRENCH RESEARCHERS, WHICH SEEKS TO INCLUDE NUMEROUS CROSS-NATIONAL ITEMS IN THE FRENCH NATIONAL ELECTION STUDY FOR 1995. THE FOLLOWING AMERICAN NATIONAL ELECTION STUDY-TYPE ITEMS RECEIVE ATTENTION: CANDIDATE FEELING THERMOMETERS, JOB APPROVAL RATINGS, AND ECONOMIC EVALUATIONS. INCLUSION OF THESE MEASURES IN FRENCH SURVEYS MAY ALLOW AN IMPORTANT CROSS-NATIONAL EXTENSION OF VOTING MODELS THOUGHT TO BE PECULIAR TO ONE POLITICAL CULTURE, SUCH AS THE U.S.

Fast pace of technology changes makes conduction of high-quality web surveys increasingly easy, and performance of web surveys should be continuously monitored. In this article, a comparison is made of the results of telephone and web surveys of items measuring international news knowledge. The authors compare web surveys of general populations conducted in the United States and Norway in January 2009 with their telephone replications conducted in the same month. Results show rather small differences between web and telephone surveys, particularly in Norway. The authors discuss the results and make recommendations for use of web surveys and for future methodological research.

This paper emphasises the importance of assessing measurement equivalence when using cross-national and longitudinal surveys. We illustrate how to test for measurement equivalence using multiple group confirmatory factor analysis and clarify under what conditions both meaningful comparisons of construct means and relationships between constructs are possible. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme, empirical applications dealing with attitudes towards welfare policies are provided to illustrate the procedure.

This paper emphasises the importance of assessing measurement equivalence when using cross-national and longitudinal surveys. We illustrate how to test for measurement equivalence using multiple group confirmatory factor analysis and clarify under what conditions both meaningful comparisons of construct means and relationships between constructs are possible. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme, empirical applications dealing with attitudes towards welfare policies are provided to illustrate the procedure. Adapted from the source document.

"The papers in this volume stem from the third annual meeting of the InternationalWorkshop on Comparative Survey Design and Implementation (CSDI). Initiated in 2002, the Workshop developed out of cross-cultural symposia held at ZUMA throughout thenineteen nineties. One of CSDI's primary goals is to promote research intomethodological issues of particular and sometimes unique salience for cross-cultural andcross-national survey research. The seven papers are good illustrations of the broad spectrum of research fields in whichCSDI researchers are engaged. The volume begins and ends with two framework papers,the first discussing what makes cross-national research special, the last on where we beginto draw boundaries between entities to be compared in 'comparative' research. The fiveremaining papers discuss (in order of the volume): the rich information available from themultinational European Social Survey on data collection; socio-demographic measurementand comparability in the cross-national context, again with reference to the EuropeanSocial Survey; cognitive pre-testing of translated questionnaires; communicativeissues across cultures in telephone interviews; and preliminary work on guidelines onusing interpreters underway at the U.S. Census Bureau. The last-mentioned papers reflectresearch concerns in U.S. cross-cultural context." (author's abstract). Contents: Peter Lynn, Lilli Japec, Lars Lyberg: What's so special about cross-national surveys? (7-20); Achim Koch, Michael Blohm: Fieldwork details in the European Social Survey 2002/2003 (21-52); Uwe Warner, Jürgen H.P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik: Discussion of the income measure in the European Social Survey: a proposal of revised survey questions about the "total net household income" (53-66); Patricia L. Goerman: An examination of pretesting methods for multicultural, multilingual surveys: the use of cognitive interviews to test Spanish instruments (67-80); Brian Kleiner, Yuling Pan: Cross-cultural communication and the telephone survey interview (81-90); Yuling Pan: The use of interpreters in the conduct of household surveys: development of U.S. Census Bureau interpretation guidelines (91-100); John MacInnes: Category and comparison across what kind of frontier? (101-114).

Is ethnic separatism the inevitable consequence of pursuing policies that allow for a reflowering of subnational ethnic identities, as in Quebec, or are there ways of having both a strong sense of attachment to one's own group while still fostering loyalty to the larger state, as some variants of pluralist theory would have it? This is the central research question guiding our comparative study of the relationship between attachment to the individual ethnic group & loyalty to the larger country. Research on the relationship between strength of ethnic attachments & loyalty to the country as a whole impinges on the political wisdom of choosing public policies from affirmative action, to bilingual education, to political autonomy for subregional groups. The comparative politics literature is fraught with assumptions about the nature of this relationship, but few studies have tried to empirically estimate it. Drawing on research by de la Garza et al (1996) & Sidanius et al (1997), we test pluralist, melting pot, & ethnic dominance models of ethnic attachment & overall levels of patriotism in the US & four other polyethnic states. Our data are derived from a 1995 ISSP National Identity Survey & the 1990-93 World Values Survey. We find mixed support for the alternative models when we replicate Sidanius & de la Garza & call for greater focus in cross-national surveys on assuring adequate samples of minority groups so that extant theories can be tested more fully. 5 Tables, 9 References. Adapted from the source document.

Social research methodologists have postulated that the transparency of survey procedures and data processing is mandatory for assessing the Total Survey Error. Recent analyses of data from cross-national surveys have demonstrated an increase in the quality of documentation reports over time and significant differences in documentation quality between the projects. This research note replicates previous results with an extended set of documentation-related quality indicators describing the degree of completeness of information at the consecutive steps of the survey cycle. It also extends earlier findings by indicating no significant relationship between the quality of the survey documentation and the quality of the survey itself. We analysed a meta-data set of survey characteristics, studying all available up-to-date methodological reports of 1,145 national surveys from four large-scale multi-wave projects: the European Quality of Life Survey (2003-2016), European Social Survey (2002-2018), European Values Study (1981-2017), and International Social Survey Programme (1985-2018).

Our paper examines the validity of the rotating questionnaire block about perceptions about and attitudes towards democracy included in the sixth round of the European Social Survey (ESS). The preliminary assumptions that inspired our analysis were that respondents' understanding of the questions formulated in such an internationally comparative survey may be challenged due to diverging theoretical constructions and narratives that feed historically developed notions of 'democracy.' Moreover, even within the same country people with a different socioeconomic, ethnic, and educational background may have different perceptions about the same questionnaire 'items.' We applied a multi-method approach to analyze the above metho-dological puzzle: a complex statistical analysis of the Hungarian ESS data served to help examine the consistency of answers to individual items and the entirety of the questionnaire block, while supplementary focus group research helped us apprehend the variety of interpretations of and perceptions about the individual items, as well as problems with understanding various terms included in the questions that assessed attitudes towards democracy. Our findings support the initial hypothesis: respondents had obvious difficulties understanding some of the items designed to assess attitudes towards democracy, while many others had differing interpretations. We conclude that even though the ESS is one of the most refined, well-prepared and validated comparative surveys in Europe, the related data cannot be analyzed without careful consideration of what the individual questions might mean in different contexts.

Die Tendenz, dass Frauen religiöser sind als Männer wurde häufig beobachtet. Zur Begründung dieses Unterschieds wurden viele Theorien formuliert, deren Erklärung von biologisch bis soziologisch reichen; ein Konsens zur Erklärung des Geschlechtsunterschieds in der Religiosität wurde nicht erreicht. Auf der Basis von Daten aus dem European Social Survey, der European Values Study und dem International Social Survey Programme sowie einer neuen Methode zur Messung des Gender Gap vergleichen wir Länder, Generationen und Zeiträume in Europa, um drei Schlüsselfragen zu beantworten: 1) Wie stark hängt der Unterschied zwischen Männern und Frauen vom verwendeten Indikator für Religiosität (z. B. Mitgliedschaft, Kirchgang, Beten, Glauben) ab? 2) Besteht auf der Ebene der Nationalstaaten eine Beziehung zwischen der Größe des Gender Gap und dem Ausmaß der Säkularisierung oder der Gleichheit der Geschlechter? 3) Nähert sich die Religiosität von Männern und Frauen in der Generationenfolge oder über die Zeit an? Die Ergebnisse deuten auf eine Verringerung des Gender Gap in Europa, insbesondere in Süd- und Osteuropa hin, nach wie vor sind jedoch Differenzen beobachtbar. Selbst in sehr säkularen Ländern und solchen, in denen die Ungleichheit zwischen den Geschlechtern stark reduziert wurde, identifizieren sich Frauen deutlich häufiger als Männer mit einer Religionsgemeinschaft, sie halten sich für religiöser und praktizieren ihre Religiosität sowohl öffentlich als auch privat häufiger.