Sandwiches served from 12.15
Scales are frequently used in public opinion research to determine the strength of individuals’ attitudes or beliefs. Individuals who fall on the extreme ends of the spectrum are unlikely to be swayed by politicians or affected by a social intervention whereas individuals who feel less strongly may be more likely to change their opinion. It is therefore important to accurately measure attitude strength and understand the potential for measurement error on such scales.
Much research has been done to assess measurement error in attitude questions. For example, acquiescence bias is common among agree/disagree scale questions. Respondents may not want to create conflict or may satisfice, making them more likely to choose “agree,” regardless of their true feelings and regardless of the question being asked.
In the era of social media, researchers are beginning to use social media to measure social attitudes. While previous research has documented the risk of bias in the dichotomous estimates of public opinion, research has not been conducted to determine whether social media data can be used to measure the strength of an attitude and whether it suffers from bias similar to survey data. In this presentation, we answer two research questions:
• Do non-traditional data produce attitude distributions that are similar to those from survey data?
• If not, is the difference attributable to missingness (i.e., undercoverage and nonresponse), or is it a function of measurement error?
To answer these questions, we used data on a range of social issues collected by Germany’s European Social Survey, the German Internet Panel, Reddit posts, and Reddit SampleSize – two probability-based surveys, social media posts, and a non-probability survey. We compared the distribution of responses for each topic across the four data sources overall and by subdomains. To isolate measurement error from missingness, we limited analysis to individuals who had completed the Reddit SampleSize survey and compared the distribution of attitudes among this subset’s Reddit posts to their survey responses.
Presented by:
Ashley Amaya, RTI International
Date & time:
November 7, 2018 12:30 pm - November 7, 2018 1:30 pm
Venue:
ISER large seminar room, 2N2 4.16
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