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Extracting Wisdom from Experts and Small Crowds: Strategies for Improving Informant-based Measures of Political Concepts

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  • Maestas, Cherie D.
  • Buttice, Matthew K.
  • Stone, Walter J.

Abstract

Social scientists have increasingly turned to expert judgments to generate data for difficult-to-measure concepts, but getting access to and response from highly expert informants can be costly and challenging. We examine how informant selection and post-survey response aggregation influence the validity and reliability of measures built from informant observations. We draw upon three surveys with parallel survey questions of candidate characteristics to examine the trade-off between expanding the size of the local informant pool and the pool's level of expertise. We find that a “wisdom-of-crowds†effect trumps the benefits associated with the expertise of individual informants when the size of the rater pool is modestly increased. We demonstrate that the benefits of expertise are best realized by prescreening potential informants for expertise rather than post-survey weighting by expertise.

Suggested Citation

  • Maestas, Cherie D. & Buttice, Matthew K. & Stone, Walter J., 2014. "Extracting Wisdom from Experts and Small Crowds: Strategies for Improving Informant-based Measures of Political Concepts," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(3), pages 354-373, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:polals:v:22:y:2014:i:03:p:354-373_01
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    Cited by:

    1. Kyle L Marquardt, 2020. "How and how much does expert error matter? Implications for quantitative peace research," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 57(6), pages 692-700, November.
    2. Jordan Kujala, 2020. "Donors, Primary Elections, and Polarization in the United States," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(3), pages 587-602, July.
    3. Stephen A Meserve & Sivagaminathan Palani & Daniel Pemstein, 2018. "Measuring candidate selection mechanisms in European elections: Comparing formal party rules to candidate survey responses," European Union Politics, , vol. 19(1), pages 185-202, March.
    4. Danielle Joesten Martin, 2022. "Ideological and partisan biases in ratings of candidate quality in U.S. House elections," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 103(3), pages 622-634, May.
    5. Ali Fisunoglu & Kyungkook Kang & Tad Kugler & Marina Arbetman-Rabinowitz, 2023. "Relative political capacity: A dataset to evaluate the performance of nations, 1960–2018," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 40(3), pages 325-345, May.

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