Party Attachment in Europe: Methodological Critique and Substantive Implications

Richard Sinnott

British Journal of Political Science, 1998, vol. 28, issue 4, 627-650

Abstract: This article identifies the different ways in which the Eurobarometer surveys measure party attachment in different sets of member states of the European Community or Union. The main variants are an absolute question, an ordinal question and a relative question. Using Eurobarometer data covering the period 1978–94, it is shown that these different questions produce predictably different estimates of the distribution of party attachment. The methodological interpretation is confirmed and a new equivalent measure of party attachment is constructed using the results of a specific test inserted for this purpose in Eurobarometer 41.1. The new measure is constructed in such a way as to preserve the comparability of Eurobarometer data on this topic over time. The new operationalization significantly improves the predictive power of the construct and it is recommended that it be adopted in future.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:28:y:1998:i:04:p:627-650_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in British Journal of Political Science from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().