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Difficulties in Harmonising Measures of Public Agenda

Difficulties in Harmonising Measures of Public Agenda. František KALVAS Department of Sociology University of West Bohemia, Pilsen. Workshop „ Harmonisation of Social Survey Data for Cross-National Comparison “ Prague , Czech Republic , 19. 10. 2010 With support of grant:

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Difficulties in Harmonising Measures of Public Agenda

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  1. Difficulties in Harmonising Measures of Public Agenda František KALVAS Department of Sociology University of West Bohemia, Pilsen Workshop „Harmonisation of Social Survey Data for Cross-National Comparison“ Prague, Czech Republic, 19.10.2010 With support of grant: „POSTDOC-10 FF ZČU“

  2. Agenda-Setting: • Agenda-setting theory describes processes of reaching a consensus on which issues society needs solve at first. • Agenda is set of the most important issues. • The process take place (mainly) among three general actors: the public, the media and the political system. • Each actor has own agenda and all three agendas are in a mutual interaction.

  3. Agenda-Setting andCross-National Comparison: • E.g. Comparative Agendas Project(http://www.comparativeagendas.org): • Belgium, Denmark, Spain, UK • Canada, USA • Several measures of policy, media and public agendas. • Measures undergo process of harmonization nowadays.

  4. Measuring Public Agenda: • Open-ended Questions • MIP: “The most important issue facing our country today” • MIE: “The most important event contemporary” • Close-ended Questions • GS/F: “Government should spend/focuse more/equal/less on {policy area}” • RoI/U: “Rate how much is impotant/urgent {policy area}”

  5. Comparison of questions: • Open- vs. close- addressed in basic methodological literature • MIP: • focused on present issues • MIE: • both retrospective and prospective • both personal and public • both political and other • both domestic and foreign • focused on events

  6. Risk I: Different Codebooks • Not all events belong to an issue • e.g. visit of pope Benedict 16th • Not all events belong just to one issue • E.g. undignified argument on church restitution in Parliament • issue of political culture • issue of church restitution

  7. Solution to Risk I: • Focus on issues: • subsume to each issue all relevant events • Differentiation: • break up an analysis along dimensions that are mixed in events under the investigation • e.g. formal (political culture) vs. substantive (church restitution) issues

  8. Risk II: Cherries, Apples, and Melons • Issues cover events like fruits cover seeds. • Cherry: issue covering one event • disastrous events e.g. floods • Apple: issue covering arranged set of events • political issues e.g. church restitution • Melon: issue covering huge number of events with negligible impacts or scope or likelihood to happen • social issues e.g. criminality, unemployment

  9. Risk II: Cherries, Apples, and Melons • Cherries, apples, and melons are equally easy to be addressed by respondents as a issues, • BUT NOT as events. • The harder it is the more risky it is to harmonize such a data.

  10. Solution to Risk II: • Focus on “safe” type of issues in analysis. • Harmonize cherries and apples carefully. • Avoid melons.

  11. Evidence I: • Public opinion survey (N=1069) • Czech Republic • June 2005 • Both MIP (1st) and MIE (4th) questions • Frequencies of 3 top issues (MIP) and corresponding events (MIE) • Frequencies of 3 top events (MIE) and corresponding issues (MIP)

  12. Evidence II:

  13. Evidence III: Personal experience affects MIP and MIE differently.

  14. Thank you for your kind attention! kalvas@kss.zcu.cz

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