Ateliers méthodologiques de Montréal – Charlotte Cavaille

Measuring Policy Preferences: Why It is Hard and Can We Do Anything About It?

Charlotte Cavaille (Assistante Professeure à l’Université du Michigan)

Political scientists rely extensively on subjective survey data to measure policy preferences. The limits of such measurement tools are known to all. They include 1) measurement error that correlates with individual characteristics, with implications for causal inference (i.e. « what is changing when answers to subjective survey items change? »), 2) the challenge of mapping policy preferences over multidimensional objects (candidates, party platforms) to preferences over each dimension (i.e., « what is it about a given candidate that make people choose one candidate over the other? ») and 3) the aggregation of individual preferences into a meaningful quantity of interest (i.e. what does it mean to say « voters prefer A over B »). This seminar will provide an introduction to these issues, drawing in part from recent methodological debates and innovations in the field.

This methods seminar is co-organised by the Montreal Methods Workshops of the CSDC and the Canada Research Chair in Electoral Democracy

Contactez Juliette Leblanc pour les informations Zoom.

Please contact Juliette Leblanc for Zoom informations.

This content has been updated on 12 August 2022 at 11 h 19 min.