Impact of Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) on Voter Turnout and Their Potential Use for Civic Education

Fivaz, Jan; Nadig, Giorgio

doi:10.2202/1944-2866.1025

Cited by 72 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Other studies showed already the beneficial effects of VAAs for voter knowledge (Schultze 2014;Kamoen et al 2015) and a higher turnout (Fivaz and Nadig 2010;Ladner and Pianzola 2010;Ladner, Fivaz, and Pianzola 2012;Marschall and Schultze 2012). When the mediated moderator model of this study is applied to turnout in Dutch municipalities, results show that VAA effects on turnout are also contingent on socio-economic and demographic factors.…”

Section: Model Testssupporting

confidence: 52%

VAAs as sources of volatility and fragmentation: self-selection effects and genuine effects

Kleinnijenhuis

Pol

Hoof

et al. 2016

Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties

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Recent studies show that using Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) affects party preferences of voters, and hence leads to party switching. Party switching is a necessary but insufficient condition for volatility (a net switch of voters to other parties) and fragmentation (more parties gaining seats) at the aggregate level of electoral constituencies. The research question addressed here is whether the availability of VAAs in electoral constituencies weakens or strengthens trends towards greater volatility and fragmentation as observed in western democracies in the last decades. The data come from 380 Dutch municipalities during the 2014 Dutch municipal council elections. In 133 of them a VAA was available. Using a moderated mediation model that controls for the municipal self-selection of a VAA, we find that a VAA by itself leads to higher levels of volatility and fragmentation. However, VAA availability has a dampening effect in municipal constituencies with characteristics (e.g. population size, ethnic diversity, young average age) that would otherwise make them more susceptible and prone to volatility and fragmentation.

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Section: Model Testssupporting

confidence: 52%

VAAs as sources of volatility and fragmentation: self-selection effects and genuine effects

Kleinnijenhuis

Pol

Hoof

et al. 2016

Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties

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“…However, our aim is to illustrate user-based dynamic scale validation; we will therefore not exploit this unique avenue. More broadly, case selection was driven by the fact that smartvote passes easily as one of the most institutionalised VAAs (Fivaz and Nadig, 2010), and secondarily because the smartvote team was generous enough to share the data. Explicitly, it is not our aim to critique smartvote.…”

Section: Empirical Examplementioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial maps in voting advice applications: The case for dynamic scale validation

et al. 2014

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Low-dimensional spatial representations of political preferences are a widespread feature of voting advice applications (VAAs). Currently, VAA spatial maps tend to be defined on the basis of a priori reasoning. This article argues that VAA spatial maps should be empirically validated to safeguard fundamental psychometric properties -in particular, unidimensionality and reliability. We suggest dynamic scale validation as a pragmatic method for improving measurement quality in VAA spatial maps. The basic logic of dynamic scale validation is to exploit early user data as a benchmark against which ex-ante defined maps can be evaluated. We draw on data from one of the most institutionalised VAA settings, Switzerland, to illustrate this dynamic approach to scale validation.

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“…The proliferation of these data has effectively enabled political scientists to put many empirical questions under rigorous tests. In particular, researchers investigated whether VAAs influence voting behaviour (Marschall and Schmidt, 2008;Walgrave et al, 2008;Garzia, 2010), participation and voter turnout (Fivaz and Nadig, 2010;Hartwig, 2010;Ladner and Pianzola, 2010), and have used VAA data to test questions relating to voting behaviour, pledge fulfilment, policy congruence and the dimensionality of political space (Schwarz et al, 2011;Talonen and Sulkava, 2011;Katsanidou and Lefkofridi, 2012;Wheatley et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating parties’ policy positions through voting advice applications: Some methodological considerations

Gemenis

2012

Acta Polit

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The past few years have seen the advent and proliferation of Voting Advice (or Aid) Applications (VAAs), which offer voting advice on the basis of calculating the ideological congruence between citizens and political actors. Although VAA data have often been used to test many empirical questions regarding voting behaviour and political participation, we know little about the approaches used by VAAs to estimate the positions of political parties. This article presents the most common aspects of the VAA approach and examines some methodological issues regarding the phrasing of statements, the format of response scales, the reliability of coding statements into response scales and the reliability and validity of scaling items into dimensions. The article argues that VAAs have a lot of potential but there is also much space for methodological improvements, and therefore concludes with some recommendations for designing VAAs.

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Impact of Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) on Voter Turnout and Their Potential Use for Civic Education

Cited by 72 publications

References 8 publications

VAAs as sources of volatility and fragmentation: self-selection effects and genuine effects

VAAs as sources of volatility and fragmentation: self-selection effects and genuine effects

Spatial maps in voting advice applications: The case for dynamic scale validation

Estimating parties’ policy positions through voting advice applications: Some methodological considerations

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