IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/statpp/v11y2020i1p1-21n4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluating Visualisations in Voting Advice Applications

Author

Listed:
  • Bruinsma Bastiaan

    (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Faculty of Social Sciences, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 6, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Tel.: +49 (0)69-798-36641)

Abstract

While the design of voting advice applications (VAAs) is witnessing an increasing amount of attention, one aspect has until now been overlooked: its visualisations. This is remarkable, as it are those visualisations that communicate to the user the advice of the VAA. Therefore, this article aims to provide a first look at which visualisations VAAs adopt, why they adopt them, and how users comprehend them. For this, I will look at how design choices, specifically those on matching, influence the type of visualisation VAAs not only do but also have to, use. Second, I will report the results of a small-scale experiment that looked if all users comprehend similar visualisations in the same way. Here, I find that this is often not the case and that the interpretations of the users often differ. These first results suggest that VAA visualisations are wrongly underappreciated and demand closer attention of VAA designers.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruinsma Bastiaan, 2020. "Evaluating Visualisations in Voting Advice Applications," Statistics, Politics and Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-21, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:statpp:v:11:y:2020:i:1:p:1-21:n:4
    DOI: 10.1515/spp-2019-0009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/spp-2019-0009
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/spp-2019-0009?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Macdonald, Stuart Elaine & Rabinowitz, George & Listhaug, Ola, 1995. "Political Sophistication and Models of Issue Voting," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(4), pages 453-483, October.
    2. Roger Feldman, 2013. "Filled Radar Charts Should not be Used to Compare Social Indicators," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 111(3), pages 709-712, May.
    3. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    4. André Krouwel & Annemarie Elfrinkhof, 2014. "Combining strengths of methods of party positioning to counter their weaknesses: the development of a new methodology to calibrate parties on issues and ideological dimensions," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 1455-1472, May.
    5. Rocio Garcia-Retamero & Edward T. Cokely & Saima Ghazal & Alexander Joeris, 2016. "Measuring Graph Literacy without a Test," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 36(7), pages 854-867, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kenneth Benoit & Michael Laver, 2005. "Mapping the Irish Policy Space - Voter and Party Spaces in Preferential Elections," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 36(2), pages 83-108.
    2. Korthals, R.A. & Levels, M., 2016. "Multi-attribute compositional voting advice applications (MacVAAs) : a methodology for educating and assisting voters and eliciting their preferences," Research Memorandum 011, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    3. N/A, 1997. "Individual Perception and Models of Issue Voting," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 9(1), pages 13-21, January.
    4. Mikael Gilljam, 1997. "Symposium. The Directional Theory of Issue Voting: I," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 9(1), pages 5-12, January.
    5. Irwin L. Morris & George Rabinowitz, 1997. "Symposium. The Directional Theory of Issue Voting: IV," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 9(1), pages 75-88, January.
    6. Paul V. Warwick, 2004. "Proximity, Directionality, and the Riddle of Relative Party Extremeness," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 16(3), pages 263-287, July.
    7. Peter Grand & Guido Tiemann, 2013. "Projection effects and specification bias in spatial models of European Parliament elections," European Union Politics, , vol. 14(4), pages 497-521, December.
    8. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    9. Kaivan Munshi & Mark Rosenzweig, 2008. "The Efficacy of Parochial Politics: Caste, Commitment, and Competence in Indian Local Governments," NBER Working Papers 14335, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Burkhard Schipper & Hee Yeul Woo, 2012. "Political Awareness and Microtargeting of Voters in Electoral Competition," Working Papers 124, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    11. Marco Faravelli & Randall Walsh, 2011. "Smooth Politicians And Paternalistic Voters: A Theory Of Large Elections," Levine's Working Paper Archive 786969000000000250, David K. Levine.
    12. Eric Kaufmann & Henry Patterson, 2006. "Intra‐Party Support for the Good Friday Agreement in the Ulster Unionist Party," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 54(3), pages 509-532, October.
    13. Micael Castanheira, 2003. "Why Vote For Losers?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(5), pages 1207-1238, September.
    14. Mihir Bhattacharya, 2019. "Constitutionally consistent voting rules over single-peaked domains," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 52(2), pages 225-246, February.
    15. Sven Banisch & Eckehard Olbrich, 2021. "An Argument Communication Model of Polarization and Ideological Alignment," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 24(1), pages 1-1.
    16. Robbett, Andrea & Matthews, Peter Hans, 2018. "Partisan bias and expressive voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 107-120.
    17. Felis, Paweł & Rosłaniec, Henryk, 2017. "Wykorzystanie podatku od nieruchomości w lokalnej polityce podatkowej miast Unii Metropolii Polskich," Gospodarka Narodowa-The Polish Journal of Economics, Szkoła Główna Handlowa w Warszawie / SGH Warsaw School of Economics, vol. 2017(2), February.
    18. Peter Nijkamp & Marc van der Burch & Gabriella Vindigni, 2002. "A Comparative Institutional Evaluation of Public-Private Partnerships in Dutch Urban Land-use and Revitalisation Projects," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 39(10), pages 1865-1880, September.
    19. Vincenzo Atella & Jay Coggins & Federico Perali, 2005. "Aversion to inequality in Italy and its determinants," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 2(2), pages 117-144, January.
    20. Hibbs, Douglas A, Jr, 2000. "Bread and Peace Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 104(1-2), pages 149-180, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:statpp:v:11:y:2020:i:1:p:1-21:n:4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyterbrill.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.