Attitudinal Stability on Short- and Long-term Issues: A Data-Driven Learning Guide

Application

In this exercise, you will use correlations to measure the consistency of respondents' answers to questions before and after the 2004 election. A correlation is a measure of the strength of association between two variables. It is used to predict the value of one variable given the value of the other. Correlations are expressed on a scale from -1.0 to +1.0, with the strongest correlations found at both extremes of the scale. Correlation coefficients closer to zero indicate a weak relationship between variables. The closer the correlation coefficient is to +1.0, the more stable responses are between the pre-election survey and the post-election survey.

Ideological Identification

In both waves of data collection, respondents were asked to place themselves on a seven-point scale, where 1 equals "extremely liberal," two equals "liberal," three equals "slightly liberal," four equals "moderate; middle of the road," five equals "slightly conservative," six equals "conservative," and seven equals "extremely conservative." Look at the stability of ideology between the pre-election survey and the post-election survey. How stable do the ideology responses seem to be? Is this the result you would expect for ideological identification?

Government Spending and Services

Respondents were asked their opinion about government spending and services using a seven-point scale, where one equals "government should provide many fewer services" and seven equals "government should provide many more services." Consider the stability in attitudes toward government spending and services between the pre-election survey and the post-election survey. Are attitudes toward government spending and services stable between the pre-election survey and the post election survey? Is this what you expected, given the issue's centrality to elections?

Interventionism

To measure attitudes toward government intervention into foreign affairs, respondents gave their attitudes on a seven-point scale, ranging from "should solve with diplomacy" (1) to "must be ready to use military force" (7). Look at the stability of opinions on government interventionism between the pre- and post-election surveys. How stable are the opinions on government interventionism? Is this what you expected given the issue's novelty in the political arena?

Education and Attitudinal Stability

To find out whether attitudinal stability varies by level of education, you will use comparison of correlations. For ease of analysis, we recoded education level (v043254) into three categories: "less than a high school diploma," "high school diploma, no college degree," and "college degree or higher." The new variable is called "edu.cats."

Comparison of correlations calculates the correlation coefficients between two variables separately for each category of the row variable. In each analysis, the pre-election response will be the independent variable, the post-election response will be the dependent variable, and education will be the row variable.

T-statistics measure whether or not the correlation in one cell of the table is different than what is expected (the overall correlation). When the absolute value of the T-statistic is large, the probability that you would obtain these results if the variables are not related at all is small. Higher absolute values of the T-statistic suggest that it's more likely that the variables are related.

Turn your attention to the relationship between education and stability in ideological identification . Do respondents with higher levels of education have more stable ideology than those with lower levels of education?

Now look at the relationship between education and stability in attitudes about government spending . Do respondents with higher levels of education have more stable attitudes about government spending than those with lower levels of education?

Next consider the relationship between education and stability of attitudes about government interventionism . Do respondents with higher levels of education have more stable attitudes about government interventionism than those with lower levels of education?

Note: The online data analysis system (DAS) used on this site uses a system called Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA), developed and maintained by the Computer-assisted Survey Methods Program (CSM) at the University of California, Berkeley. Documentation for DAS/SDA can be found on their Web site.

Goal & Concept - Dataset - Application - Interpretation & Summary - Bibliography