Unpacking Gender, Age, and Education Knowledge Inequalities: A Systematic Comparison

Marta Fraile and Jessica Fortin‐Rittberger

Social Science Quarterly, 2020, vol. 101, issue 4, 1653-1669

Abstract: Objective Scrutinize how the three main sources of knowledge inequalities, namely, gender, age, and education, relate to the content, format, and object of the survey items used to measure knowledge Methods Using a pooled data set encompassing 106 postelection surveys in 47 countries from the CSES, we perform analyses by stacking the data at the question level. Results Questions probing familiarity with electoral and partisan politics provide knowledge gaps of a higher magnitude. However, our balanced comparison of the three gaps also confirms the peculiarities of the gender gap in knowledge previously portrayed by the bulk of the literature. Conclusion Surveys aspiring to measure citizens’ knowledge about the political world in a valid manner should include items inquiring about different substantive contents, and not only elections or partisan politics as the available postelectoral surveys around the world currently do. They also should use closed‐ended format with at least four possible options, and should maximize the object of inquiry, so that the cognitive abilities required to correctly answer the questions are diverse and the measurement does not favor one over the others.

Date: 2020
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