The src panel data and mass political attitudes

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 9, Issue 1, 1979, Pages 89-114

  Erikson, Robert S ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84976028306     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123400001630     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. Philip E. Converse, ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics’, in David Apter, ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York: The Free Press, 1964), pp. 206-61;
2. Philip E. Converse, ‘Attitudes and Non-Attitudes: Continuation of a Dialogue’, in Edward R. Tufte, ed., The Quantitative Analysis of Social Problems (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1970), pp. 168-89. Butler and Stokes have made a similar interpretation from their British panel data. See
3. David Butler and Donald Stokes, Political Change in Britain (London: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 173-200.
4. John C. Pierce and David P. Rose, ‘Nonattitudes and American Public Opinion: The Examination of a Thesis’, American Political Science Review, lxviii (1974), 626-49;
5. Christopher Achen, ‘Mass Political Attitudes and the Survey Response’, American Political Science Review, lxix (1975), 1218-31.
6. See the communications in response to Achen's article and Achen's reply in American Political Science Review, lxx (1976), 1226-31.
7. Converse, ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics’, pp. 238-45.
8. Achen, ‘Mass Political Attitudes and the Survey Response’, pp. 1220-1;
9. Pierce and Rose, ‘Nonattitudes and American Public Opinion’, pp. 644-5.
10. Philip E. Converse, ‘Comment’, American Political Science Review, lxviii (1974), 650-60, a reply to
11. Pierce and Rose, ‘Nonattitudes and American Public Opinion’.
12. Achen, ‘Mass Political Attitudes and the Survey Response’, p. 1226.
13. David R. Heise, ‘Separating Reliability and Stability in Test-Retest Correlations’, A merican Sociological Review, xxxiv (1969), 93-101.
14. David E. Wiley and James A. Wiley, ‘The Estimation of Error in Panel Data’, American Sociological Review, xxxv (1970), 112-17.
15. For details of the applications of the Heise and Wiley-Wiley models to the SRC panel data, see Robert S. Erikson, ‘Analyzing One-Variable Three-Wave Panel Data: A Comparison of Two Models’, Political Methodology, v (1978), forthcoming.
16. It would be difficult to specify a set of assumptions that could allow a considerable amount of true attitude change when the observed test-retest correlations are virtually invariant with the temporal distance between measurements. But one way the stability estimates could be lowered is by arbitrarily assigning lower than average reliabilities to the midpoint 1958 scores. A possible reason for considering this option is that 1958 was a midterm year. If issue attitudes are less crystallized in non-presidential years, the error variances might be greater in 1958 than in 1956 or 1960.F ortunately, it is possible to make an independent check on the possibility that the observed attitudes for 1958 were disproportionately unreliable. If 1958's observed opinions were less reliable than for presidential years, one ought to have greater difficulty predicting 1958 attitudes from standard demographic variables. To see whether such a pattern could be found, attitudes for each issue for each wave were separately regressed against a series of dummy variables (measured for the given year) representing age, race, religion, education, head's occupation, and region. On the average, the multiple Rs were greatest for 1958, next greatest for 1960, and lowest for 1956. Assuming constancy to the relationship between background variables and attitudes, this ordering suggests the highest reliabilities were generally for 1958 and the lowest for 1956. Since this is exactly the ordering suggested by the Wiley-Wiley assumptions,t he evidence disconfirms the notion that the high stability estimates were spuriously obtained as a result of low item reliability in 1958.
17. The appropriate formula can be found in Frederick M. Lord, ‘Elementary Models for Measuring Change’, in Chester W. Harris, ed., Problems in Measuring Change (Madison, Wise.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963), pp. 21-38.
18. Converse's estimates are based on an analysis of dichotomized responses, as discussed below. Pierce and Rose employ the Heise method to obtain estimates of true attitude stability on the domestic policy items. Achen obtains his estimates with the help of an assumption that true change scores over successive time intervals are uncorrelated with each other. For a comparison of the different methods, see Erikson, ‘The Analysis of One-Variable Three-Wave Panel Data’
19. Converse, ‘Attitudes and Non-Attitudes’, pp. 174-5;
20. Converse, ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics’, fn. 39, p. 259.
21. Converse appears to have recognized the possibility of this alternative model. See ‘The Nature of Belief Systems’, fn. 41, p. 259; and
22. ‘Attitudes and Non-attitudes’, p. 175.
23. Useful discussions of normal-ogive models can be found in Frederick M. Lord and Melvin R. Novick, Statistical Theories of Mental Test Scores (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1968), pp. 358-94; and in
24. Warren S. Torgerson, Theory and Method of Scaling (New York: Wiley 1958), pp. 385-91.
25. Particularly if the marginal distributions are constant over time, the interval-level version of the black-and-white model would assume that any change in position along the five-point scale (such as from ‘strongly agree ‘to’ agree’) is evidence of random behaviour. This extreme model can readily be rejected on the basis of empirical evidence. See Pierce and Rose, ‘Nonattitudes and American Public Opinion’, pp. 634-5.
26. Achen, ‘Mass Political Attitudes and the Survey Response’, pp. 1226-9.
27. John E. Hunter and T. Daniel Coggin, ‘Communication’, American Political Science Review, lxx (1976), 1226-1229.
28. It is conceivably a mistake to assume that the response stabilities of the most politically sophisticated respondents should serve as the standard for the instrument. For example, wem ight imagine that the stability of a person's responses to an item is a function of his interest in the issue, but that interest in the issue is not correlated with political sophistication. But for this to be true, respondents’ levels of interest in different issues must be statistically independent of each other, to allow for the fact that response stability on one issue cannot predict response stability on another issue. In his initial discussion of the panel data, Converse (‘The Nature of Belief Systems’, pp. 245-6) notes surprisingly little tendency for stable respondents (with consistently pro or consistently con opinions) on one issue to be stable respondents on other issues. This finding led Converse to suggest the existence of separate ‘issue publics’ for each issue - virtually non-overlapping sets of people who are concerned about different issues. In other words, people may be sufficiently concerned about some issues to express true attitudes, but uninterested in other issues, upon which they therefore express non-attitudes. A lthough we have rejected the strict black-and-white interpretation of the panel's issue items, the possibility remains for a milder version of Converse's ‘issue public’ hypothesis. People may tend to give their most stable responses on certain issues which are of greatest interest to them. If so, the measuring instrument obtains highly reliable responses when people are sufficiently interested. Although this interpretation is compatible with the data, it requires interest levels on given issues to be uncorrelated with each other or with political sophistication.
29. Converse, ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics’, pp. 227-34.
30. Pierce and Rose, ‘Nonattitudes and American Public Opinion’, p. 645;
31. Achen, ‘Mass Political Attitudes and the Survey Response’, p. 1229.
32. In a study of attitude constraint in the 1960s, Bennett also finds little tendency for inter-item correlations to increase with presumed indicators of political sophistication. See Steven E. Bennett, ‘Consistency in the Public's Social Welfare Attitudes in the 1960s’, American Journal of Political Science, xvii (1973), 544-70. For a study with contrary findings, see
33. Robert Axelrod, ‘The Structure of Public Opinion on Policy Issues’, Public Opinion Quarterly, xxxi (1967), 51-60.
34. In exact opposition to the assertion made here. Searing et al. have argued that because observed adult attitudes are unstable and relatively uncorrelated with one another, there is little structure to adults’ political attitudes that can be explained by pre-adult political socialization. See Donald D. Searing, Joel J. Schwartz and Alden E. Lind, ‘The Structuring Principle: Political Socialization and Belief Systems’, American Political Science Review, lxvii (1973), 415-432. Of course, adult attitudes are not entirely formed during the pre-adult years. The estimate that policy attitudes are quite stable over a two or four-year span does not imply that adult attitudes rarely change in the longer run. For example, from the average Wiley-Wiley estimate of attitude stability over four years (·87x·97 = ·84), the projected attitude stability over n four-year spans is ·84”. Thus, say, over a span of thirty-two years the stability of attitudes would be ·848, or only ·25.
35. Norman Nie, Sidney Verba and John R. Petrocik, The Changing American Voter (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 123-55.
36. George Bishop, Alfred J. Tuchfarber and Robert W. Oldendick, ‘Change in the Structure of American Political Attitudes: The Nagging Question of Question Wording’, American Journal of Political Science, xxii (1978), 250-69;
37. John L. Sullivan, James E. Piereson and George E. Marcus, ‘Ideological Constraint in the Mass Public’, American Journal of Political Science, xxii (1978), 233-49.