3200 rue Jean-Brillant
Montréal
QC H3T 1N8
The Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, in collaboration with the Canada Research Chair in Electoral Democracy, presents:
Charlotte Cavaille (University of Michigan)
Measuring Policy Preferences: Why It is Hard and Can We Do Anything About It?
You can learn more about Charlotte Cavaille by clicking here.
Where and When: Monday, August 15 at 2 pm. Room C-4145, Jean-Brillant building, UdeM and on Zoom.
Abstract: Political scientists rely extensively on subjective survey data to measure policy preferences. The limits of such measurement tools are known to all. They include 1) measurement error that correlates with individual characteristics, with implications for causal inference (i.e. “what is changing when answers to subjective survey items change?”), 2) the challenge of mapping policy preferences over multidimensional objects (candidates, party platforms) to preferences over each dimension (i.e., “what is it about a given candidate that make people choose one candidate over the other?”) and 3) the aggregation of individual preferences into a meaningful quantity of interest (i.e. what does it mean to say “voters prefer A over B”). This seminar will provide an introduction to these issues, drawing in part from recent methodological debates and innovations in the field.
