the 2015 british election study
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The 2015 British Election Study. Professor Ed Fieldhouse Professor Jane Green Professor Hermann Schmitt Professor Geoffrey Evans Professor Cees van der Eijk. Three successful research funding applications The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context
Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014
The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context
The 2015 British Election Study
Professor Ed FieldhouseProfessor Jane Green
Professor Hermann SchmittProfessor Geoffrey Evans
Professor Cees van der Eijk
The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context
Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014
Three successful research funding applications The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context
Data collection to enable understanding of the 2015 British election, continuing the series of British Election Studies since 1960.
The Scottish Independence Referendum and the British Voter: an enhancement to the British Election Study Internet Panel
Funded under the Future of UK and Scotland initiative Significant enhancement to the BES online panel study; additional waves in
January and September 2014; enlarged samples in all waves up to Summer 2016 (Scottish, Welsh and English), sample of 16-17 year olds.
55,000 additional target interviews in total.
Enhancing the Impact of the British Election Study Resources for a part-time Impact Fellow/researcher and senior media advisor
providing support for dissemination and engagement.
The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context
Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014
BES 2015: Themes, Study Design, Priorities
Disengagement, Accountability and Representation Informs the prioritisation of items e.g. trust, turnout, registration, policy
responsibility and delivery; issue-scales for longer term comparability Research partnerships and engagement, e.g. Electoral Commission, Hansard
Society Sampling design and stratification; minimal clustering, response rates for
hard-to-reach groups; constituency and campaign characteristics, and socio-economic context, etc.
Linking of data, to candidate and campaign characteristics, etc. Need to understand the Scottish Referendum, and other elections.
Understanding the vote choice and the voter in context Spatial context; socio-economic, political and inter-personal context Political and institutional context; sub-national and cross-national elections Temporal context; the need for panel data and long-term comparability The context of survey measurement; within-survey effects and mode effects
Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014
The BES instruments
2015 General Election
Pre
N = 20,000
Post-election face-to-face probability sample
+ mailback inc. CSES module N = 3,000
Post N = 20,000
Scottish and local elections
N = 20,000
Local elections N = 15,000
Twitter data harvest
January 2014
May 2014
September 2014
May 2017
May 2016
Voter registration data matching
2010 election sample
2005 election sample
Base sample N = 20,000
European and local elections
N = 20,000
Independence referendum N = 20,000
Daily rolling thunder N = 650 per day
The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context
• Post-linking of data for users• Turnout validation (F2F)• Registration checking
(BESIP)• Constituency data• Local Census data • expert survey for party
placements
• Integrating BES data within a network of complementary studies• Pre-linking of data with
studies receiving and/or likely to receive funding
Harnessing & broadening the value of: BES voter surveys
Data gathering with: Liaison/best practice: Insights from:
British Candidate Study (Campbell, Hudson, Rüdig)
Scottish Election Study (SES) (Carman, SES Team)
Welsh Election Study (Scully, Jones)
Constituency Agents Survey (Fisher, Fieldhouse, Cutts)
Campaign spending data (Johnston, Pattie, Cutts)
Qualitative Election Study of Britain (QESB)
(Winters)
Campaign media content (Stevens, Banducci, Gibson)
Online campaign (iBES) (Gibson)
Proposed study of candidate websites (Milazzo)
Comparative Study of Electoral Systems / World Values Survey /
ESRC’s Understanding Society
Manifesto Research on Political Representation (MARPOR/CMP)
(Budge, Regel)
Party Strategies Study (Cowley, Goodwin)
Scottish Referendum Study (BES/UK Initiative)
Macro-database on socio-economic context
Policy outcome database on lower-level output areas
Constituency database (Norris / Thrasher)
Twitter Study
US National Election Studies, Annenberg Campaign Studies,
European Election Studies, etc.. (Winters)
The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context
Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014
• Prioritising established questions• European Election Study module (BESIP
wave 2)• Comparative Study of Electoral Systems:
post election mail back or stand alone survey.
• International advisory board – and liaison with other national election studies
International and comparative
The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context
Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014
• User experiments and proposals (‘playground’ items e.g. certainty scales)
• Split sample for alternative questions (e.g. PTV and party feeling scales; European integration position)
• Randomisation of question placement (e.g. party ID, vote choice, MII, trust)
• Randomisation of question object within grid (e.g. party leaders & issues for evaluation of performance & responsibility) and of response categories (e.g. social desirability)
• Psychological characteristics: social desirability, risk taking• Individualised (pre-loaded) questions: who is your local MP?• Discussant network module: focus on turnout and household
relationships (norms, expressive motives, costs).• Political knowledge quiz with pictures • Mapping local community
BESIP innovative features
The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context
Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014
• Collaboration with Cara Wong, Jake Bowers and Daniel Rubenson
• Respondent define their own communities (using Google mapping technology)
• Respondent perceptions of neighbourhood: e.g. economic performance, norms of turnout, effect of cuts, legacy of Thatcherism, impact of immigration, social, political and ethnic diversity.
• Equivalent questions about pre-defined geographies (e.g. constituency)
• Potential for linking objective data• To be introduced in BESIP wave 3.
Innovation: mapping project
The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context
The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context
The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context
Four Examples of “Local Communities”
The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context
Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014
• Gather tweets (from firehose) during the 2015 campaign by a predefined/responsive list of relevant hashtags and topics
• Indicator of issue salience and emphasis in campaign• Potential for sentiment analysis of positive/negative
tone• Gecoding of tweets for linking with constituency and
candidate data• Gather all tweets and follower information on BES
respondents who provide twitter handle. • Allows comparison of respondents and candidates
Innovation: social media
The 2015 British Election Study: Voters in Context
Election Study Workshop, Montreal, 25th March 2014
• New professionally designed BES website• One stop shop for new BES data historical
data• Data playground feature: create simple
charts & tables • News, blogs, working papers etc.• To be launched in April
Website