Using Bayesian Aldrich‐McKelvey Scaling to Study Citizens' Ideological Preferences and Perceptions

Christopher Hare, David Armstrong, Ryan Bakker, Royce Carroll and Keith T. Poole

American Journal of Political Science, 2015, vol. 59, issue 3, 759-774

Abstract: Aldrich‐McKelvey scaling is a powerful method that corrects for differential‐item functioning (DIF) in estimating the positions of political stimuli (e.g., parties and candidates) and survey respondents along a latent policy dimension from issue scale data. DIF arises when respondents interpret issue scales (e.g., the standard liberal‐conservative scale) differently and distort their placements of the stimuli and themselves. We develop a Bayesian implementation of the classical maximum likelihood Aldrich‐McKelvey scaling method that overcomes some important shortcomings in the classical procedure. We then apply this method to study citizens' ideological preferences and perceptions using data from the 2004–2012 American National Election Studies and the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Our findings indicate that DIF biases self‐placements on the liberal‐conservative scale in a way that understates the extent of polarization in the contemporary American electorate and that citizens have remarkably accurate perceptions of the ideological positions of senators and Senate candidates.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12151

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:wly:amposc:v:59:y:2015:i:3:p:759-774

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Journal of Political Science from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().