I did wish they had put oh say Donald Rumsfeld or Hillary Clinton up. I'll have to Google Charles Kennedy and find out who he is :P
Dana
>One of the factors they take into account is the country of origin, and the
>questions are administered accordingly. So US respondents may get some
>differing questions/presentations/choices than Australians or Brazilians.
>
>larry
>
>At 02:52 PM 11/30/2003, you wrote:
>>I take it the author is British as the examples look like British
>>politicians. I am more pragmatic and to the right of Charles Kennedy,
>>whoever that might be. It seems to think I am fairly left-wing; I think my
>>answers on language culture and immigration have a lot to do with that.
>>
>>Dana
>>
>> > To add just a bit. The author used one form of factor analysis I
>> > don't necessarily like, called principle components analysis. Without
>> >
>> > going into detail it makes some assumptions about how the individual
>> > items are related to each other, frequently overestimating this
>> > communality. Its good for a first estimation of the underlying
>> > factors, and for the initial development of a questionnaire, but for
>> > determining the actual structure of the factors involved, I think its
>> >
>> > inadequate.
>> >
>> > I'll be downloading the data today and using some other analysis on
>> > it later today and see what I come up with.
>> >
>> > larry
>> >
>> > >I think that this survey is much more valid than the other ones we've
>> > tried.
>> > >
>> > ><http://politics.beasts.org/>http://politics.beasts.org/
>> > >
>> > >FWIW, here are my scores:
>> > ><http://politics.beasts.
>> > org/scripts/results?surveyid=838428544>http://politics.beasts.
>> > org/scripts/results?surveyid=838428544
>> > >
>> > >AxisPosition
>> > >1left/right-7.2199 (-0.4346)
>> > >2pragmatism+2.2182 (+0.1335)
>> > >
>> > >Anyhow the following is part of the rationale of the survey given by
>> > >its authors.
>> > >--
>> > >politicalcompass.org is a web site which asks a number of opinion
>> > >questions of its visitors, and then places them in a two-dimensional
>> > >space which is supposed to characterize their political views.
>> > >Unfortunately, politicalcompass.org has a poor reputation; in
>> > >particular, there is a suspicion that its questions are designed to
>> > >make respondents lean towards an economically right-wing, socially
>> > >liberal ("right libertarian") position, and the two axes of
>> > variation
>> > >on which results are plotted are opaque in their derivation and may
>> > >not be tremendously relevant.
>> > >
>> > >These suspicions are compounded by the problem that
>> > >politicalcompass.org's methods are not open and, therefore, it is
>> > not
>> > >possible to determine whether their selection of questions carries a
>> > >bias which its operators are using to further their own ends.
>> > >
>> > >The purpose of this site is to do a survey of this type properly and
>> > >openly, so that the methods and data in use are open to inspection.
>> > >More detail
>> > >
>> > >The proper way to do this is to collect a bunch of questions and a
>> > >bunch of answers to them, then take the space defined by all the
>> > >answers to the questions, and construct a spanning basis for it. The
>> > >natural way to do this is with principal components analysis, though
>> > >as a non-statistician I can't comment on whether this is actually
>> > the
>> > >best approach. We should then be able to discover -- in terms
>> > defined
>> > >by the answers to the questions set -- the significant axes of
>> > >variation in the data.
>> > >
>> > >This means that all the results we get are defined by the data: we
>> > do
>> > >not measure anyone's views according to criteria we set out, but
>> > >according to endogenous criteria. The only points at which our
>> > >judgment enters the method are
>> > >
>> > > * when choosing questions (or, rather propositions); and
>> > > * when we give context to the results.
>> > >
>> > >The first of those shouldn't matter, if the questions are reasonably
>> > >unbiased and cover a wide enough range of subject materials. The
>> > >second doesn't matter, since it's just a presentational issue.
>> > >--
>> > >
>> > >So far I'm going over their analysis, and looking at how they did
>> > the
>> > >factor analysis, it looks pretty good so far. I'm going download
>> > >their data over the weekend and run it through a few of my stats
>> > >programs (SPSS for the factor analysis and AMOS for the causal
>> > >modelling/path analysis) and see if it holds. but my first
>> > impression
>> > >by looking at their published eigenvectors, is that it looks legit.
>> > >
>> > >larry
>> > >
>> >[
>>
>>----------
>>[
[Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings]
