Measuring Voter Decision Strategies in Political Behavior and Public Opinion Research

Lau, Richard R; Kleinberg, Mona S; Ditonto, Tessa M

Abstract

Although political science has advanced the study of voter decision-making, the discipline still understands very little about how citizens go about reaching those decisions. In this article, we introduce a five-factor self-report scale of political decision-making (PolDec-5) administered to six different samples with more than 6,500 respondents over the past four years. Analyses illustrate that our five subscales—Rational Choice, Confirmatory, Fast and Frugal, Heuristic-Based, and Going with Your Gut—have high internal consistency, relatively high discriminant validity (as they are largely distinct from existing measures of decision-making style), and significantly high predictive validity, as established by process tracing studies where actual decision strategies of voters can be observed directly. Finally, we discuss how these new measures can help predict important political outcomes.

Citation

Lau, R. R., Kleinberg, M. S., & Ditonto, T. M. (2018). Measuring Voter Decision Strategies in Political Behavior and Public Opinion Research. Public Opinion Quarterly, 82(S1), 911-936. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfy004

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Mar 22, 2018
• Publication Date: 2018
• Deposit Date: Dec 5, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 15, 2021
• Journal: Public Opinion Quarterly
• Print ISSN: 0033-362X
• Electronic ISSN: 1537-5331
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 82
• Issue: S1
• Pages: 911-936
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfy004
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1312369