A perfect match? The impact of statement selection on voting advice applications' ability to match voters and parties

Lefevere, Jonas; Walgrave, Stefaan

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2014.04.002

Cited by 37 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…This means that the design choices in VAAs have a substantial impact on the outcome. There are other studies that have shown that such design effects also occur as a result of other elements of the design, such as statement selection (Lefevere & Walgrave, ; Walgrave et al, ). In this article we have expanded this strand of research by analyzing the relevance of the response scale format that VAAs employ.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…VAAs are well‐known and widely used in many countries today (for reviews about their history and usage, see Cedroni & Garzia, ; Garzia & Marschall, ), and research about the design, purpose, and effects of VAAs has matured in recent years (see, e.g., Garzia & Marschall, ; Rosema, Anderson, & Walgrave, ). The topics addressed in research about VAAs are diverse and include, among others, the selection of statements (Lefevere & Walgrave, ; Walgrave et al, ), the coding of party positions (Gemenis, ; Gemenis & van Ham, ; Trechsel & Mair, ), and the spatial models used in VAAs (Germann, Mendez, Wheatley, & Serdült, ; Louwerse & Otjes, ; Otjes & Louwerse, ). These are all elements of the design of VAAs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Response Scales in Voting Advice Applications: Do Different Designs Produce Different Outcomes?

Rosema¹,

Louwerse²

2016

Policy &Amp; Internet

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Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) represent popular election campaign tools in many countries, enabling voters to discover which party or candidate provides the best match with their political preferences. This article examines the effects of design choices on these tools by focusing on the response scale that is used to measure the policy positions of parties and voters. We analyze the impact of scale length on the advice generated by these tools using user data from a VAA developed for the 2014 Dutch local elections. We transform the original 101-point scale into several alternative scale formats and determine if this leads to a different voting recommendation. We also examine the suitability of alternative scales for creating spatial models, which are often employed by VAAs. We show that the response scale has a potentially profound impact on the resulting advice (with voters receiving different VAA outcomes depending on the scale length), except for voters with an extremist response style. The findings have practical implications for the design of these tools: outcomes should be presented as a preference list, rather than focusing on the "best match."

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Response Scales in Voting Advice Applications: Do Different Designs Produce Different Outcomes?

Rosema¹,

Louwerse²

2016

Policy &Amp; Internet

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“…It goes almost without saying that the quality of euandias in any other VAA endeavour, for that mattersdepends first and foremost on the content and formulation of its statements (Walgrave et al, 2009;Lefevere and Walgrave, 2014;Van Camp et al, 2014). This task was undertaken in close collaboration with the International Advisory Board of euandi.…”

Section: The Euandi Questionnairementioning

confidence: 99%

euandi2019: Project Description and Datasets Documentation

et al. 2019

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The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), created in 1992 and directed by Professor Brigid Laffan, aims to develop inter-disciplinary and comparative research on the major issues facing the process of European integration, European societies and Europe's place in 21 st century global politics.. The Centre is home to a large post-doctoral programme and hosts major research programmes, projects and data sets, in addition to a range of working groups and ad hoc initiatives. The research agenda is organised around a set of core themes and is continuously evolving, reflecting the changing agenda of European integration, the expanding membership of the European Union, developments in Europe's neighbourhood and the wider world.

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“…Concerning the selection and formulation of statements, early research has provided clear evidence that the choice and composition of statements make a difference to the result indicated by a VAA (Lefevere & Walgrave, , ; Walgrave, Nuytemans, & Pepermans, ). The same seems to apply to the formulation of the statements; responses to the statements vary according to how they are formulated, for example, whether they are put positively or negatively (Holleman, Kamoen, van de Pol, Krouwel, & de Vreese, ; Van Camp, Lefevere, & Walgrave, ).…”

Section: The Proliferation Of Vaa Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research on Voting Advice Applications: State of the Art and Future Directions

Garzia¹,

Marschall²

2016

Policy &Amp; Internet

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Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have experienced a great deal of success over the past decade, and are now used in many countries around the world. This editorial introduces a Special Issue resulting from a section of the 2015 European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) conference in Montreal, organized by the ECPR's official VAA Research Network. It discusses the global spread and the popularity of these tools, addresses the history and different branches of VAA research, the current state of the art, and the remaining puzzles in the field. It also focuses attention on the wealth of research that is examining the effects of VAAs on political parties, candidates, and voters, as well as how VAA design choices affect the advice given to voters and their subsequent voting behavior. We hope this Special Issue will also highlight the potential of VAA-generated data for studying party positioning over time and across countries, allowing for comparative analyses of the characteristics and development of parties and party systems.KEY WORDS: Voting Advice Applications, VAA, voting, democracy, voting behavior Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have experienced a great deal of success over the past decade. They are now used in many countries around the world, and previously isolated VAA research efforts and projects have recently been pooled in an effort to establish a research community focusing on the idea, design, and implications of these tools. This Special Issue of Policy & Internet gathers together articles first presented at a section of the 2015 European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) conference in Montreal, 1 organized by the ECPR's official VAA Research Network. By bringing together these articles we hope this Special Issue will help focus attention on the wealth of research that is examining the effects of VAAs on parties, candidates, and voters, and how VAA design choices affect the voter advice given and subsequent voter behavior. We also hope the issue will highlight the potential in VAA-generated data for studying party positioning over time and across countries, allowing for comparative analyses of the characteristics and development of parties and party systems.

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A perfect match? The impact of statement selection on voting advice applications' ability to match voters and parties

Cited by 37 publications

References 15 publications

Response Scales in Voting Advice Applications: Do Different Designs Produce Different Outcomes?

Response Scales in Voting Advice Applications: Do Different Designs Produce Different Outcomes?

euandi2019: Project Description and Datasets Documentation

Research on Voting Advice Applications: State of the Art and Future Directions

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