Please join us at GLOBIS for another Friday Forum Friday, March 31, from 2:00 to 3:30pm when Dr. Shawn Treier will present his research entitled, "Democracy as a Latent Variable." A brief abstract follows:
Measurement is critical to the social scientific enterprise. Many key concepts in social-scientific theories are not observed directly, and researchers rely on assumptions (tacitly or explicitly, via formal measurement models) to operationalize these concepts in empirical work. In this paper we apply formal, statistical measurement models to the Polity indicators of democracy and autocracy, used widely in studies of international relations. In so doing, we make explicit the hitherto implicit assumptions underlying scales built using the Polity indicators. We discuss two models: one in which democracy is operationalized as a latent continuous variable, and another in which democracy is operationalized as a latent class. Our modeling approaches allow us to assess the "noise" (measurement error) in the resulting measure of democracy. We show that this measurement error is considerable, and has substantive consequences when using a measure of democracy as an independent variable in cross-national statistical analysis. Our analysis suggests that skepticism as to the precision of the Polity democracy scale is well-founded, and that many researchers have been overly sanguine about the properties of the Polity democracy scale in applied statistical work.
In addition, if anyone is interested in presenting a seminar paper, thesis, prospectus, or dissertation to an interested and informed audience in preparation for academic conferences, please contact Regan Damron at the email address or phone number listed below.
GLOBIS is located in historic Franklin House on the corner of Thomas St. and Broad St. at the Northern edge of campus. Please email redamron@uga.edu or call 542-6633 for directions.
Regards,
Regan Damron
Research Associate
Center for the Study of Global Issues (GLOBIS)
School of Public & International Affairs
The University of Georgia
