Title: Analyzing Misinformation: Perceptions of Congressional Candidates' Ideologies
Abstract: Many studies use the seven-point issue and ideological scales in the American National Election Study (NES) series to examine not only the willingness or ability of citizens to place themselves and political candidates on the scales, but also as measures of the citizen's true positions on the scales and of the citizen's true perception of the candidates' positions on those scales. These are then used as important independent variables in electoral and other decision models. Thus, it is essential for us to understand the meaning of these measures. What do they really measure? How accurate are they as measures? This analysis will focus on respondents' perceptions of candidate positions. Many of the questions here can be directly related to the debate about the content of measures of the respondent's own position on issues. Many studies have found little stability in repeated measures of the respondent's own expressed position on issues and ideology. Two basic interpretations have been offered. Converse (1970) initially argued that many respondents without attitudes responded randomly and that there were two groups of respondents, one with stable attitudes and the other simply expressing a random response reflecting their nonattitudes. Achen (1975) and others argued instead that the fault was not that of the respondents, but that vague questions encouraged a variability in response, a measurement error that would be differentiated from the respondent's true underlying stable attitude. A primary piece of evidence in the debate has been that levels of political sophis
Publication Year: 1989
Publication Date: 1989-02-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 60
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