Triangulation: Using BES and QES Britain data

1. Triangulation: Using BES and QES Britain data Kristi Winters, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (Birkbeck)

2. Triangulation Quantitative data Experimental data Qualitative data

3. Qualitative Election Study of Britain (QES Britain) • People use language to make sense of the world around them, including politics. We convert language into numbers. • QES Britain seeks to understand how people make sense of politics and their political choices. • Record and analyze the views and concerns of British citizens in their own words before and after the 2010 General Election.

4. Qualitative Election Study of Britain (QES Britain) • Generate thick, rich qualitative data that could be used to provide insights into the opinions of citizens on: • politicians, • party leaders, • political issues, • perceptions of civic duty and political alienation, and • the campaigns both before and after the general election.

5. BES and QES Britain Triangulation • Triangulation of survey and textual data • Both methods focus on different aspects of the same issue. • Different methods compliment each other, similar findings from different methods increases validity. • Each method may provide unique - and possibly divergent - answers to the same questions.

6. Leader evaluations – Triangulating the data • 2010 British Election Study pre-election questionnaire asked participants to rate the three main leaders on aspects of • Likeability • Competence • Truthfulness • Your best interests • Clegg squeaks by Cameron on questions of likeability, truthfulness, best interests • Cameron best on competence measures

7. BES: Leader Evaluation Means (SD)

8. BES: Leader Evaluations Source: 2010 British Election Study Pre-election dataset. All data weighted with variable w8.

9. The BES and the QES Britain – Triangulating data Numbers do not reveal the basis upon which people made these assessments. Do not provide an insight in their positive, negative, or neutral associations; or How those assessments may have been connected or inter-related within or between the three leadership categories. Thus this research aimed to generate data in the form of language to provide greater insight.

10. QES Britain • Fourteen focus groups were conducted in the weeks before and after the 2010 General Election • Total of 76 participants • Pre-election: • 3 in Essex (Leaders Debates) • 2 in London • 2 in Wales • 2 in Scotland • Post-election: • 2 groups in Essex • 1 each in London, Wales, and Scotland

11. QES Britain: Leaders’ Debates • Participants were recruited using e-mails and snowballing techniques • Participants were screened by age and sex in order to obtain an equal number of men and women as well as a range of ages. • In Essex, of 17 post election participants 16 reported they voted. • 8 voted Liberal Democrat • 5 voted Conservative • 3 voted Labour

12. QES Britain – Leaders’ evaluations conclusions Participants saw Brown as a man who was trying hard, but, crucially, the language, descriptions and discussions of him lacked terms or association of effective or successful governing or leadership. Cameron received mixed reviews from the participants, but people used positive terms to assess his leadership ability, and perhaps most importantly, they did not think of him as a failure or as ineffectual.

13. QES Britain – Leaders’ evaluations conclusions Clegg was perceived as being honest and trustworthy – not one participant characterized him as deceptive or untrustworthy. No participant characterized Clegg as arrogant, smug or pompous; by contrast Brown and Cameron were characterised as such. However these positives traits were offset by the lack of information voters had about him, which resulted in few positive comments about his leadership abilities and a general sense of scepticism.

14. QES Britain – Leaders’ evaluations conclusions These findings compliment the quantitative results presented in the first part of this presentation. This triangulation increasing our confidence that our focus group participants had similar perceptions of the three main leaders as other voters. Provides more complex insight into how the individual characteristics for each of the three main leaders ‘hung together’ in people’s assessments of them.

15. QES Britain • Other potential topics for qualitative triangulation: • Evaluations of national party leaders (SNP, PC) • Attitudes toward hung parliament • Vote choice • Data release can be found online at: www.wintersresearch.wordpress.com