Election studies: a research data management challenge
1. Election studies: a research data
management challenge
Laurence Horton, Alexia Katsanidou
International Data Infrastructures
GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
Data Archive for the Social Sciences
IASSIST 2012
38th Annual Conference
Washington DC
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported June 7, 2012
2. National election studies
Canadian Election Study
Swedish National
Election Studies
(SNES) Japanese Election Study
(JES)
Norwegian
Election Studies
British Election Study
(BES) Danish Election
Study Israel National Election
The
Studies (INES)
American National Election Study
German Longitudinal Election
(ANES); National Annenberg
Study (GLES)
Election Study (NAES)
Austrian National Election
Studies (ANES)
Dutch Parliamentary
Election Study (DPES) Swiss Electoral Studies
(SELECTS)
Italian National
Australian Election Study
Election Study
(AES)
(ITANES)
New Zealand Election Study (NZES)
3. The International Setting
• Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP)
www.cnep.ics.ul.pt
• Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES)
www.cses.org/
• European Election Studies (EES)
www.europeanelectionstudies.net/
• Providing an Infrastructure for Research on Electoral Democracy in the
European Union (PIREDEU)
http://www.piredeu.eu/
• European Voter Project
http://www.gesis.org/wahlen/internationale-wahlstudien/the-european-voter/
• COST Action "The True European Voter"
http://true-european-voter.eu/
• CERES “Consortium for European Research with Election Studies”
4. Explaining election results
“Dewey Defeats Truman” by scriptingnews under
CC BY-SA 2.0http://www.flickr.com/photos/scriptingnews/2544447858/; “Lisa's Substitute” The Simpsons: The Complete Second Season . Writ. Jon Vitti.
Dir. Rich Moore. 20th Century Fox, 1991
5. A sprint, not a marathon.
. Intense data
generating
events.
Elections
compressed
into burst of
activity
Sprit image by Arcimboldo under CC BY 2.0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Osaka07_D6A_M200M_nearfinish.jpg; marathon image in public domain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:London_1990.jpg.
6. Instability of elections
Faoila , Anthony. “Greece fails to form new government, calls new elections.” Washington Post 15 May 2012: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/greece-fails-to-form-new-
government-calls-new-elections/2012/05/15/gIQAB9vsRU_story.html
7. “The Johnny Cash problem”
“Well, the one on the right was on the left
And the one in the middle was on the right
And the one on the left was in the middle”
Right = 1 Left = 2 Centre = 3
Left = 1 Right = 2 Centre = 3
Right = 1 Centre = 2Left = 3
Left = 1 Centre = 2 Right = 3
Centre = 1Left = 2 Right = 3
Centre = 1Right = 2 Left = 3
Clement, J.H. (1966). The One on the Right is on the Left [J. Cash] CBS Records 1966.
8. Data ownership
LSE Archive blog, “On the campaign trail” Out of the Box http://lib-1.lse.ac.uk/archivesblog/?p=2012; Montage of the General Election Day newspapers
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/electiongallery/2010/05/montage-of-the-general-election-day-newspapers.html; Lizzy Davis, “François Hollande v Nicolas Sarkozy: tweets from election day” The
Guardian, 6 May 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/french-election-blog-2012/2012/may/06/french-elections-2012-twitter; campaign broadcast
9. Privacy
Photographs: Klaus Ernst by derLinkspartei under public domainhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ernst,_Klaus_(1954),_Variante_a.jpg; CemÖzdemir by Cosimamz under CC BY-SA 2.5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CemOezdemir2010.JPG; Claudia Roth by Bündnis 90/Die Grünen Nordrhein-Westfalen under CC BY-SA-
2.0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Claudia_Roth_2010.jpg; GesineLötzsch by Ginniwunni under CC BY 3.0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gesine_L%C3%B6tzsch_5Mai2011_a.jpg; Philipp Rösler
by Fdpnds under CC BY 3.0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roesler-klein.jpg; Sigmar Gabriel by AgênciaBrasil under CC BY 3.0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sigmar_Gabriel_2008.jpg; Horst
Seehofer by J. Patrick Fischer under CC BY-SA 3.0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Seehofer.JPG; Angela Merkel by Armin Linnartz under CC BY-SA
3.0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AM_Juli_2010_-_3zu4.jpg
10. Integrating legal requirements
• For comparative
election data:
Problem of different
legal environments.
• For new types of
data collections:
What are the rules
on that?
blog.drivinglessons.com http://blog.drivinglessons.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/800px-Drive-on-the-left-kent-1b.jpg
11. “The LynyrdSkynyrd problem”
• PI’s and
research teams
change over
time.
LynyrdSkynyrd picture by Watt_Dabney licensed under CC BY 2.0http://www.flickr.com/photos/watt_dabney/4411751415/; LynyrdSkynyrd band members
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lynyrd_Skynyrd_band_members
12. Funding: the „Oliver‟ problem
• More?!
– Instability regarding
funding.
– Having to repeatedly
ask for more leads to
uncertainty
Lean, David, dir. Oliver Twist.Cineguild, 1948 Film.
13. Solutions
• What do we want?
– Usable data comparative
across space and time.
• When do we want it?
– The day after the election,
please.
Protest image by laurencehorton under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurencehorton/5160320371/in/set-72157625346145680
14. Planning ahead
•Buildthe PI groupearly on
•Secure Money flow
•Do research
•Pre-harmonization
•Plan studyComponents
•BuildCooperations
19. German Longitudinal Election
Study
• Funded from
2009-2018
– Covering state
and three
federal
elections:
2009, 2013,
2017
German Longitudinal Election Study, “Overview over the GLES Design at the Bundestag Election 2009” http://www.gles.eu/design.en.htm
20. Thank you
Archive Training Center
GESIS Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences
UnterSachsenhausen 6-8
50667 Cologne
GERMANY
Email: archive.training@gesis.org
Twitter: @GesisIDI
Website:http://www.gesis.org/archive-and-data-management-
training-and-information-centre
Notas del editor
L: Hello, I am Laurence.A: And I … am Alexia.L: And this is a ballot box, full of mystery and questionsA: Do you know what we need to fully understand the messages hidden in this ballot box? Election studies !!L: This is a complex type of study with diverse types of data. Managing this data will be complicatedA: It is… Let me show you my world
L: We find them in North America, Australia and New Zealand, Israel and JapanA: Most democracies produce election studies to make sense of every aspect of their general elections. Their purpose is to test theories of participation, voting behavior and the environment in which elections take placeL: There is a high concentration of them in Europe
A: Of course there is an interest to see what happens within countries. But political science is very comparative. Naturally, we want to see what is happening across democraciesL: So, do Canadians vote like Americans? Do the British behave like Germans?A: Not only that. The European Parliament election takes place in 27 countries simultaneously. We need a study for that!
L: Retrospective explanations of elections matter. We need to understand why people behave as they did and attempt to predict their future behaviour.A: We need to explain the winners, the losers, and the surprises. What we anticipate the night before, is not always what the day after, brings us.L: Opinion polls may get it wrong.A: Or... in one case the candidate forgot to vote for himself…
L: Election studies are like any other form of public opinion research. They are demanding. They take a great deal of preparation.A: Not quite. You cannot do field work just any time you like. There is a difference between them and other forms of public opinion measurement research.L: Election studies are short intense bursts of activity.A: You don’t train for a sprint by running marathons, right?
L: At least you have a good idea of when the next election is going to take place. In most countries elections are scheduled regularly… so you can plan.A: However! Some elections are result of crisis. They cannot be predicted, anticipated and they can be very inconvenient.L: Meaning?A: We have not secured funding and the planning is not finished!L: Oh yes, that can cause a lot of problems…
A: Election studies have various components. Lacking a data management plan can lead to different teams employing different coding strategiesL: With no strategy, coding of parties can become very confusing very quickly. The voter study team can code the left party one way, the media study team can code it another way.A: And the candidate study team a third way.
L: A big part of elections is studying media effects. From campaign literature to party manifestos, from newspaper coverage to election broadcasts. Nowadays we have social media to consider, like these tweets from the recent French presidential election.A: Valuable material, but all owned by somebody, which makes archiving and reuse very problematic.
L: And then, there are candidate studies. These people may be candidates for election...A: …in fact they are party leaders in the German parliamentL: …indeed… but believe it or not they are also human beings...with a right to privacy. What do election studies do with candidate studies? How can we protect privacy for data reuse but not comprise data quality?
A: Comparative election studies have an additional problem: how do they integrate legal requirements, particularly on data protection and data privacy… in a world full of privacy regulationsL: Things can get even more complicated with the incorporation of new tools for data collection: like internet surveys, social media studies and controlled experiments.
L: And then, there is the LynyrdSkynyrd problemA: What, the haircut? All Business in front and party in the back?L: Yes, there is that… but I was thinking more about the changing line ups. How do you ensure consistency as membership of research teams and principal investigators change? These may not be the original members but they still know how to play “Freebird”!
[PAUSE FOR 11 SECONDS] A: And then the big problem: funding. Good quality data collection … costs, and researchers may have to apply for funds for every election periodhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZrgxHvNNUc
L: Ok, these are some of the problems. Now let’s look at some solutions. As researchers, what do we want?A: Usable data, comparable across space and timeL: When do we want it?A: The day after the election, please… or at least as soon as possible.L: So, how could we have that without having to mobilize the proletariat and organize mass demonstrations?A: We will walk you through some of our ideas…
L: One example is the cooperation between the GLES [gless] the German longitudinal election study and GESIS, the German data archive. GLES [gless] is funded for a long period. It includes GESIS staff as an archive team to coordinate data management, enhancement, dissemination to the research community and migrating the data for long-term preservation into the GESIS collection.