Scaling Policy Preferences From Coded Political Texts

  • Scholars estimating policy positions from political texts typically code words or sentences and then build left-right policy scales based on the relative frequencies of text units coded into different categories. Here we reexamine such scales and propose a theoretically and linguistically superior alternative based on the logarithm of odds- ratios. We contrast this scale with the current approach of the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP), showing that our proposed logit scale avoids widely acknowledged flaws in previous approaches. We validate the new scale using independent expert surveys. Using existing CMP data, we show how to estimate more distinct policy dimensions, for more years, than has been possible before, and make this dataset publicly available. Finally, we draw some conclusions about the future design of coding schemes for political texts.

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Metadaten
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Author(s):Slava JankinORCiD, Will Lowe, Kenneth Benoit, Michael Laver
Parent Title (English):Legislative Studies Quarterly
Publication year:2011
Publishing Institution:Hertie School
First Page:123
Last Page:155
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-9162.2010.00006.x
Release Date:2019/02/08
Volume:36
Issue:1
Licence of document (German):Metadaten / metadata
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