Noughts and Crosses

  • The Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) dataset is the only dataset providing information about the positions of parties for comparative researchers across time and countries. This article evaluates its structure and finds a peculiarity: A high number of zeros and their unequal distribution across items, countries and time. They influence the results of any procedure to build a scale, but especially those using factor analyses. The article shows that zeroes have different meanings: Firstly, there are substantial zeroes in line with saliency theory. Secondly, zeroes exist for non-substantial reasons: The length of a manifesto and the percentage of uncoded sentences, both strongly varying across time and country. We quantify the problem and propose a procedure to identify data points containing non-substantial zeroes. For the future comparative use of the dataset we plead for a theoretical selection of items combined with the information about the likelihood that zeroes are substantially meaningful.

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Metadaten
Author:Silke Hans, Christoph Hönnige
URN:urn:nbn:de:hbz:386-kluedo-28789
ISSN:1861-7018
Series (Serial Number):Kaiserslautern Occasional Papers in Political Science (KOPS) (2)
Document Type:Working Paper
Language of publication:English
Date of Publication (online):2012/02/13
Year of first Publication:2008
Publishing Institution:Technische Universität Kaiserslautern
Date of the Publication (Server):2012/02/13
Page Number:35
Faculties / Organisational entities:Kaiserslautern - Fachbereich Sozialwissenschaften
DDC-Cassification:3 Sozialwissenschaften / 320 Politik
Licence (German):Standard gemäß KLUEDO-Leitlinien vom 16.11.2011