This article shows that highly correlated measures can produce different results. We identify a democratization model from the literature and test it in over 120 countries from 1951-1992. Then, we check whether the results are robust regarding measures of democracy, time periods, and levels of development. The findings show that measures do matter: while some of the findings are robust, most of them are not. This explains, in part, why the debates on democracy have continued rather than been resolved. More importantly, it underscores the need for more careful use of measures and further testing to increase confidence in the findings. Scholars in comparative politics increasingly are drawn to large-N statistical analyses, often using datasets collected by others. As in any field, we show how they must be careful in choosing the most appropriate measures for their study, without assuming that any correlated measure will do.
Academic dishonesty in higher education is an increasingly visible problem throughout the world and in Romania in particular. A total of 1127 university students from six public Romanian universities were surveyed for their experiences and beliefs with 22 behaviors that might be considered academically dishonest. A five-factor solution to the High Educ
This paper considers the case of the international migrants’ confidence in political institutions, from a social embeddedness perspective on political trust. We use country-level aggregates of confidence in institutions as indicators of specific cultures of trust, and by employing data from the European Values Study, we test two competing hypotheses. First, as confidence in institutions depends on the values formed during early childhood, the international migrant’s confidence in political institutions in the current country of residency will be influenced by the confidence context from the country of origin. Second, the host country may have different norms of trust in political institutions, and a process of re-socialization may occur. Therefore, the immigrants’ confidence in institutions is influenced by two confidence contexts: one from the origin country and one from the host country. The time spent in the two cultures, along with other characteristics from these contexts, shape the interaction effects we tested in multilevel cross-classified models.
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