IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/pscirm/v13y2025i2p337-353_6.html

Who cares? Measuring differences in preference intensity

Author

Listed:
  • Cavaillé, Charlotte
  • Chen, Daniel L.
  • Van der Straeten, Karine

Abstract

How well do existing survey instruments differentiate between opinions that affect individual behavior and opinions that don't? To answer this question, we randomly assigned U.S. respondents to one of three survey instruments: Likert items (Likert), Likert items followed by personal importance items (Likert+) and Quadratic Voting for Survey Research (QVSR), which gives respondents a fixed budget to buy “favor” or “oppose” votes, with the price for each vote increasing quadratically. We find that, relative to Likert, both Likert+ and QVSR better identify people who care enough about an issue to act in opinion-congruent ways, with QVSR offering the most consistent improvement overall. Building on these results, we show how conclusions regarding the relationship between policy opinions and self-interest can differ across measurement strategies.

Suggested Citation

  • Cavaillé, Charlotte & Chen, Daniel L. & Van der Straeten, Karine, 2025. "Who cares? Measuring differences in preference intensity," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(2), pages 337-353, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:pscirm:v:13:y:2025:i:2:p:337-353_6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S204984702400027X/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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:cup:pscirm:v:13:y:2025:i:2:p:337-353_6. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ram .

    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.