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

Rosema, Martin; Louwerse, Tom

doi:10.1002/poi3.139

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Analyzing VAA log files (e.g. Alvarez et al 2014;Dinas et al 2014;Germann and Mendez 2016;Rosema and Louwerse 2016;Garry et al Forthcoming) makes it possible to measure the information that was communicated to VAA users. However, shifting the analysis to VAA-generated data in our case implies dropping the control group of non-users.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While Downs (1957: pp. 213-214) anticipated that information flows from traditional media will be tainted by partisan bias potentially leading to "echo chambers," whatever flaws present in the information provided by VAAs are associated with limitations in their design rather than with partisan considerations (see Walgrave et al 2009;Mendez 2012;Gemenis 2013;Germann et al 2014;Rosema and Louwerse 2016).…”

Section: Theory and Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Impact of Voting Advice Applications on Electoral Turnout: Evidence from Greece

Gemenis

2018

Statistics, Politics and Policy

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A new aspect of electoral campaigns in Europe, and increasingly elsewhere as well, has been the proliferation of the online voter information tools, widely known in the political science community as Voting Advice Applications (VAAs). By accessing VAAs, users are provided with information about the degree of congruence between their policy preferences and those of different parties or candidates. Although the exact mechanisms have not been rigorously investigated, a series of studies across European countries, such as Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland have demonstrated a link between the use of VAAs and electoral turnout. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this growing literature by analyzing previously untapped data from Greece, extending the empirical literature to a country where VAA effects have not been investigated before. The analysis indicates that the effect of VAAs in Greece is marginal to non-existent while there seems to be no evidence of the hypothesized information mechanism which purportedly drives such effects. The paper concludes with suggestions that future studies of VAA effects on turnout can address in their design.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theory and Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Voting Advice Applications on Electoral Turnout: Evidence from Greece

Gemenis

2018

Statistics, Politics and Policy

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“…The article by Rosema and Louwerse () turns attention to VAA methodology, by analyzing a rather underresearched topic in the literature, namely, the effect of different answer scales on the voting advice provided to users. Their data derive from a VAA developed for the 2014 Dutch local elections.…”

Section: Outline Of the Special Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

“…As is the case with statement selection, party coding strategies and the choice of the matching algorithm, their article shows that answer scales matter—except for voters with an extremist response style. On the basis of their findings, Rosema and Louwerse () discuss the practical implications for VAA designers, suggesting that the voting advice should be presented as a preference list, rather than focusing on the “best match.”…”

Section: Outline Of the Special Issuementioning

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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“…For example, more than 4m people used the StemWijzer before the 2012 elections in the Netherlands and more than 15m the Wahl-O-Mat ahead of the German national election in 2017. Research on VAAs has mostly dealt with their effects on political knowledge (Schultze 2014), issue voting (Ladner 2016), voter turnout (Fivaz and Nadig 2010;Marschall and Schultze 2012), electoral preferences (Mahéo 2016;Walgrave, van Aelst, and Nuytemans 2008;Kleinnijenhuis et al 2017) as well as with the impact of design choices on the recommendations given to voters (Germann et al 2015;Rosema and Louwerse 2016;Agathokleous and Tsapatsoulis 2016;Katakis et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping the Austrian political spectrum with the help of VAAs

Jäckle

König

2019

ozp

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This paper uses data from the Austrian Voting Advice Application (VAA) wahlkabine.at to locate parties in policy spaces for the 2006, 2008, 2013 and 2017 national elections. It formulates an approach that combines positional information from the VAA data with information about issue saliences that stems from the VAA itself as well as from manifestos coded by the regularly conducted Austrian National Election Study. The VAA-inherent and the external weights serve to calibrate party policy spaces that underlie the VAA data. The paper depicts the Austrian political party space by means of a two-dimensional multidimensional scaling (MDS) map, and furthermore assesses the usefulness of the two weighting procedures. The findings suggest that the use of the internal weights cannot make much of a difference in the present form. In contrast, the external weights not only alter the structure of the party space but also enhance the confidence in the results for substantial reasons.

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

Cited by 8 publications

References 52 publications

The Impact of Voting Advice Applications on Electoral Turnout: Evidence from Greece

The Impact of Voting Advice Applications on Electoral Turnout: Evidence from Greece

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

Mapping the Austrian political spectrum with the help of VAAs

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