Research Methods in Political Psychology

Abstract

Given the interdisciplinary nature of political psychology research, the methods employed to produce scientific knowledge should be able to answer the questions raised in the discipline. The multitude of methods used in political psychology offers a variety of options for those interested in conducting research in political science. This article explains the basic structure of experimental design, survey research, and content analysis and briefly discusses the recent developments and interest growing on certain methods in the discipline. Each method is discussed in detail to the extent that would be sufficient to understand what one could achieve by using it.

Notes

Kinder and Palfrey, Experimental Foundations of Political Science; Druckman et al., “The Growth and Development of Experimental Research Political Science”; Druckman et al., Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science; and Morton and Williams, Experimental Political Science and the Study of Causality.

Camerer, Behavioral Game Theory and Henrich et al., Foundations of Human Sociality.

Gladwell, Blink; Gigerenzer, Gut Feelings; Ariely, Predictably Irrational; and Taleb, Fooled by Randomness.

Kahneman et al., Judgment under Uncertainty.

Since early 2000s, the interest towards neuroscience and genetics in political science is on significant rise. We see that neuro-politics and geno-politics are the two sub-disciplines within political psychology that promote scientific studies in understanding and modeling citizen behavior on vote choice, party identification and emotional reactions (for a general discussion on this topic, please refer to the special issue of Hatemi and McDermott, “The Political Psychology of Biology, Genetics, and Behavior”).

Druckman and Kam, “Students as Experimental Participants.”

For a broader discussion as to how experiments can contribute to theory-building in Turkish political science, refer to Erişen, “Deneysel Yöntem.”

Brady, “Contributions of Survey Research to Political Science.”

Esmer, Measuring and Mapping Cultures.

See for example: Carkoglu and Kalaycioglu, Turkish Democracy Today.

Erişen and Erişen, “The Effect of Social Networks on the Quality of Political Thinking”; Erişen and Erişen, “Attitudinal Ambivalence in the EU Towards Turkey's EU Membership”; Erişen and Erişen, “Cognitive Versus Emotional Evaluations as the Foundations of Public Perceptions of the EU in Turkey”; and Kentmen, “Determinants of Support for EU Membership in Turkey.”

Tourangeau et al., The Psychology of Survey Response and Krosnick, “Survey Research.”

Thurstone, “A Law of Comparative Judgment.”

Fazio, “Multiple Processes by Which Attitudes Guide Behavior”; Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion; and Zaller and Feldman, “A Simple Theory of the Survey Response.”

Weisberg, The Total Survey Error Approach.

Converse and Presser, Survey Questions,

Ibid.

Berinsky, Silent Voices and Krosnick, “The Causes of No-Opinion Responses to Attitude Measures in Surveys.”

King, “How Not to Lie With Statistics.”

Cassino and Erişen, “Priming Bush and Iraq in 2008.”

Gaines et al., “Rethinking the Survey Experiment.”

Holbrook and Krosnick, “Social Desirability Bias in Voter Turnout Reports”; Janus, “The Influence of Social Desirability Pressures on Expressed Immigration Attitudes”; Redlawsk et al., “Voters Emotions, and Race in 2008”; and Imai, “Multivariate Regression Analysis for the Item Count Technique.”

Blair and Imai, “Statistical Analysis of List Experiments.”

Bullock et al., “Statistical Analysis of Endorsement Experiments.”

Greenwald et al., “Measuring Individual Differences in Implicit Cognition.”

Payne et al., “An Inkblot for Attitudes.”

Lavrakas, Telephone Survey Methods.

Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture.

Verba et al., Participation and Political Equality.

Jennings and Van Deth, Continuities in Political Action.

Heath et al., “The Globalization of Public Opinion Research.”

King et al., “Enhancing the Validity and Cross-Cultural Comparability of Measurement in Survey Research.”

Holsti, Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities, 14.

Moyser and Wagstaffe, Research Methods for Elite Studies, 20.

Neuendorf. The Content Analysis Codebook, 10.

For example, George, “The ‘Operational Code’ ”; Hermann and Hermann, “Who Makes Foreign Policy Decisions and How”; Hermann et al., “Who Leads Matters”; Kaarbo, “Linking Leadership Style to Policy”; and Post, “Saddam Hussein of Iraq.”

For example, Winter et al., “The Personalities of Bush and Gorbachev Measured at a Distance”; Keltner et al., “Power, Approach, and Inhibition”; and Suedfeld et al., “Changes in Integrative Complexity among Middle East Leaders During the Persian Gulf Crisis.”

For example, Ozkececi-Taner, “The Impact of Institutionalized Ideas in Coalition Foreign Policy Making” and Benoit and Laver, “Estimating Party Policy Positions.”

Iyengar and Simon, “News Coverage of the Gulf Crisis and Public-Opinion”; Gelpi, “Public Opinion Toward War”; and Goldsmith et al., “American Foreign Policy and Global Opinion?”

Dillon, “Argumentative Complexity of Abortion Discourse” and Tetlock et al., “The Slavery Debate in Antebellum America.”

Hermann, “Content Analysis.”

Weber, Basic Content Analysis.

Krippendorff, Content Analysis.

Krippendorff, Content Analysis and Hermann, “Content Analysis.” In addition to these, Hermann (2010) considers two more questions: (1) What is the unit of analysis? and (2) Does the analysis capture what you are interested in learning about?

US General Accounting Office, Content Analysis.

Hermann, “Content Analysis.”

Weber, Basic Content Analysis.

Winter, “Personality and Political Behavior.”

Hermann, “Content Analysis.”

Hermann, “Foreign Policy Role Orientations and the Quality of Foreign Policy Decisions.”

Ozkececi-Taner, “The Impact of Institutionalized Ideas in Coalition Foreign Policy Making”; Benoit and Laver, “Estimating Party Policy Positions” and Ozkececi-Taner, Role of Institutionalized Ideas in Coalition Government Foreign Policymaking.

Krippendorff, Content Analysis; Stemler gives the example of the concept of “state,” an oft-used word in political science, which could “mean a political body, a situation, or a verb meaning ‘to speak’.”

Stemler, “An Overview of Content Analysis” and Weber, Basic Content Analysis.

Hermann, “Content Analysis.”

Weber, Basic Content Analysis, 12 and Krippendorff (2003) suggests that sometimes researchers establish “shared and hidden meaning of the coding” because they have been working with each other for a long time. This may result in an artificially high inter-coder reliability that can create problems.

Tinsley and Weiss, “Interrater Reliability and Agreement.”

Kolbe and Burnett, “Content-Analysis Research.”

There are different ways to measure the appropriate level of inter-coder reliability. An extensive review of the “agreement indices” can be seen in Lombard et al., Content Analysis in Mass Communication.

It is important to note that the data be durable in nature so that the content analysis could be replicable.