‘Show me the money and the party!’ – variation in Facebook and Twitter adoption by politicians

Our study explores the adoption of Facebook and Twitter by candidates in the 2013 German Federal elections. Utilizing data from the German Longitudinal Election Study candidate survey fused with data gathered on the Twitter and Facebook use of candidates, we draw a clear distinction between Facebook and Twitter. We show that adoption of both channels is primarily driven by two factors: party and money. But the impact of each plays out differently for Facebook and Twitter. While the influence of money is homogenous for Facebook and Twitter with the more resources candidates have, the more likely they are to adopt, the effect is stronger for Facebook. Conversely, a party’s impact on adoption is heterogeneous across channels, a pattern we suggest is driven by the different audiences Facebook and Twitter attract. We also find candidates’ personality traits only correlate with Twitter adoption, but their impact is minimal. Our findings demonstrate that social media adoption by politicians is far from homogenous, and that there is a need to differentiate social media channels from one another when exploring motivations for their use.     

The effects of propensity score weighting on attrition biases in attitudinal,behavioral, and socio-demographic variables in a short-term web-based panel survey

Propensity score weighting often is used to correct for attrition biases in panel surveys. While methodological literature exists on the logic of propensity score weighting and its practical applications, an in-depth discussion is lacking on the effects of using this weighting to correct for attrition biases in attitudinal, behavioral, and socio-demographic variables. By applying a split panel design, we assessed the effects of weighting on attrition biases in 48 attitudinal, 38 behavioral, and 27 socio-demographic variables. Our findings suggest – while acknowledging the estimate-specific nature of bias – first, that biases vary across these types of variables and second, that the effects of propensity score weighting are not homogeneous across the types. Accordingly, a sole reliance on socio-demographics to evaluate attrition in the present panel survey would have resulted in an underestimation of the biases of attitudinal variables and an overestimation of the ability of weighting to cure the negative effects of attrition in behavioral variables.     

When near means related: evidence from three web survey experiments on inter-item correlations in grid questions

In this article, we present the results of three question design experiments on inter-item correlations, which tested a grid design against a single-item design. The first and second experiments examined the inter-item correlations of a set with five and seven items, respectively, and the third experiment examined the impact of the question design on inter-item correlations of follow-up questions. We found that the inter-item correlations in grid designs were higher for both the set of five and seven items than for questions in a single-item design. Additionally, the inter-item correlations of the set of follow-up questions were higher if the preceding set of questions was presented in a grid. According to the findings of the present research, respondents seem to apply the interpretative near means related heuristic when answering grid questions, and also when answering follow-up questions preceeded by grid questions.