Development of a New Measure of Political Ideology
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Ideology is central to political psychology, but despite recent renewed interest in studying political ideology, its measurement is inconsistent. Ideology scales are numerous and heterogeneous in content. Further, there is disagreement on whether ideology is unidimensional multi-dimensional, and what the nature of these dimensions are. These inconsistencies limit the generalizability of conclusions made about ideology as it relates to political views and behaviour. There is a clear need for a conceptual model that is grounded in theory, and for a well-validated scale that organizes and quantifies ideology. Chapter 1 reviews the state of ideology measurement and identifies plausible dimensions supported by the literature. Chapter 2 involves the development of the new political ideology scale (NPIS) and two exploratory factor analyses (EFA) with samples of 426 postsecondary students and 239 Canadian adults, respectively, which explored the latent structure of the items. Chapter 3 involved three studies using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with samples of 484 (Time 1) and 388 (Time 2) Canadian adults, 522 postsecondary students, and 191 Canadian adults, respectively. These studies tested the fit of the refined item pool and established a three-factor structure of ideology comprising egalitarianism, traditionalism, and authoritarianism factors. Construct and criterion validity analyses were also conducted. The three factors were associated to varying degrees with personality traits; social dominance and right-wing authoritarianism; party affiliation and voting behaviour; support for normative and radical collective action; views on Canadian political policies; and perceptions of the COVID-19 virus, government response, and vaccination intentions. Chapter 4 involves a latent profile analysis (LPA) suggesting four patterns of scores, which were associated with different demographic features and views on collective action: a highly egalitarian, very anti-authoritarian and very progressive profile; an egalitarian, moderately authoritarian, and moderately progressive profile; a highly authoritarian, slightly anti-egalitarian, and highly traditional profile; and a very anti-egalitarian, moderately authoritarian, highly traditional profile. Chapter 5 involves an experimental study on persuasive messaging and ideology as it relates to COVID-19 vaccination intentions. The studies provide a foundation for a more cohesive study of ideology, and the scale has potential applications for any research requiring measurement of core political values.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".