Analysing Bias in French Pre-Election Surveys with surveybias for Stata (example 1/3)

In a recent publication (Arzheimer & Evans 2014), we propose a new multinomial measure B for bias in opinion surveys. We also supply a suite of ado files for Stata, surveybias, which plugs into Stata’s framework for estimation programs and provides estimates for this and other measures along with their standard errors. This is the first instalment in a mini series of posts that show how our commands can be used with real-world data. Here, we analyse the quality of a single French pre-election poll.

Just How Biased is Your Survey? Ask our Stata Add-On (Update)

We have updated our Stata package surveybias, which estimates bias in pre-election polls and other surveys where the true distribution is known. A new feature facilitates the en masse comparison of surveys collected before an election. Also in this release: somewhat better documentation and toy data to get you started.

Stata Software for Assessing Survey Bias

BinaryApe / Foter / CC BYIn a recent paper, we derive various multinomial measures of bias in public opinion surveys (e.g. pre-election polls). Put differently, with our methodology, you may calculate a scalar measure of survey bias in multi-party elections. Thanks to Kit Baum over at Boston College, our Stata add-on surveybias.ado is now available…

A Scalar Measure for Bias in (Multi-Party Pre-Election) Surveys

All surveys deviate from the true distributions of the variables, but some more so than others. This is particularly relevant in the context of election studies, where the true distribution of the vote is revealed on election night. Jocelyn Evans and I present a method for calculating a scalar measure that neatly summarises such bias for multi-party elections. We also present a Stata module that implements our new method.

European Social Survey Multilevel Data

Like social networks, multilevel data structures are everywhere once you start thinking about it. People live in neighbourhoods, neighbourhoods are nested in municipalities, which make up provinces – well, you get the picture. Even if we have no substantive interest in their effects, it often makes sense to control for structures in our data to…

Fails/Pierce: Almond, Lipset, Verba got it all wrong. Political Culture RIP?

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption] Fails/Pierce 2010 article in Political Research Quarterly 2010 is easily the most interesting paper I have read during the last Academic Year (btw, here are my lecture notes). Ever since the 1950s, mainstream political science has claimed that mass attitudes on democracy matter for the stability of democracy,…