government must be both inventive and sensitive in its response to the deep problems of our society: prepared both to act where necessary and to be brave enough to withdraw wherever this will be most effective.
so I guess the survey is about right.
Thanks
Dana
>Dana
>
>CK is the head of the liberal democrats over here
>
>http://www.libdems.org.uk/index.cfm/page.whois/section.people/wid.28/wgroup.
>mp
><http://www.libdems.org.uk/index.cfm/page.whois/section.people/wid.28/wgroup
>.mp>
>
>they can't be that bad, its a CF site ;)
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: dana tierney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Sent: 30 November 2003 19:53
>To: CF-Community
>Subject: Re:Interesting Political Opinions Survey
>
>
>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
>> >
>> >Axis Position
>> >1 left/right -7.2199 (-0.4346)
>> >2 pragmatism +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]
