title:         Should Voters be Encyclopedias? Measuring the Political Sophistication of Survey Respondents
authors:       Christopher Lawrence
entrydate:     2006-12-23 14:42:56
keywords:      political sophistication, public opinion, item-response theory models, political knowledge, measurement, NES, DPES
abstract:      In this paper, I apply item-response theory models to the problem of measuring the political sophistication of survey respondents in the United States and the Netherlands, discuss the advantages of IRT models over traditional measurement techniques (additive indices, interviewer evaluations) for second-stage analysis, and demonstrate the construct validity of the IRT-based measures.  I also demonstrate the relative performance of knowledge items and items constructed from party/candidate relative placement questions on both the NES and DPES.

http://polmeth.wustl.edu/retrieve.php?id=664

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