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Does Mode Matter For Modeling Political Choice? Evidence From the 2005 British Election Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

David Sanders ,
Harold D. Clarke ,
Marianne C. Stewart  and
Paul Whiteley
David Sanders*
Affiliation:
Department of Government, University of Essex, Colchester, England CO4 3SQ
Harold D. Clarke
Affiliation:
School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75083. e-mail: hclarke@utdallas.edu
Marianne C. Stewart
Affiliation:
School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75083. e-mail: mstewart@utdallas.edu
Paul Whiteley
Affiliation:
Department of Government, University of Essex, Colchester, England CO4 3SQ. e-mail: whiteley@essex.ac.uk
*
e-mail: sanders@essex.ac.uk (corresponding author)
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Abstract

Although political scientists have begun to investigate the properties of Internet surveys, much remains to be learned about the utility of the Internet mode for conducting major survey research projects such as national election studies. This paper addresses this topic by presenting the results of an extensive survey comparison experiment conducted as part of the 2005 British Election Study. Analyses show statistically significant, but generally small, differences in distributions of key explanatory variables in models of turnout and party choice. Estimating model parameters reveals that there are few statistically significant differences between coefficients generated using the in-person and Internet data, and the relative explanatory power of rival models is virtually identical for the two types of data. In general, the in-person and Internet data tell very similar stories about what matters for turnout and party preference in Britain. Determining if similar findings obtain in other countries should have high priority on the research agenda for national election studies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , Summer 2007 , pp. 257 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

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Footnotes

Authors' note: We thank the U.K. Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Gary Williams, Senior Science Manager at the ESRC, for their generous support of, and interest in, this project. We also thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.

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