TABLE 5.2 Adequacy-Confidence Codes for Social
Support Data
|
AC
Code
|
Category
Label
|
Interpretation and
Operationalization
|
|
0
|
Inapplicable
|
The cultural
differentiator is not relevant as a major basis of
political division within the society.
|
|
1
|
Inadequate: no
data
|
No survey data
could be located on party support and no
information exists in the informamation file for
the country.
|
|
2
|
Inadequate:
disagreement
|
Some
information is available, but it is so
contradictory or confusing that no judgments can be
offered.
|
|
3
|
Barely
adequate: lowest confidence
|
Either (1) the
percentage of support figures used in the
aggregation or articulation measures are estimated
from imprecise literature references to party
support, with constraints for the estimates imposed
by data on the society's composition and party
strength,1
or (2) the percentages come from a sample survey in
which the relevant number of cases
2
is less than 15.
|
|
4
|
Adequate: low
confidence
|
The percentages
come from a sample survey in which the relevant N
is greater than 15 but less than or equal to
30.
|
|
5
|
Adequate: low
to medium
|
Based on survey
data: relevant N more than 30 but less than
51.
|
|
6
|
Adequate:
medium
|
Based on survey
data: relevant N more than 50 but less than
101.
|
|
7
|
Adequate:
medium to high
|
Based on survey
data: relevant N more than 100 but less than
201.
|
|
8
|
Adequate: high
confidence
|
Based on survey
data: relevant N more than 200 but less than
351.
|
|
9
|
Adequate:
highest confidence
|
Either (1)
based on survey data with the relevant N more than
350, or (2) based on census
|
-
1Constraints were imposed to ensure
the internal logic of the estimation procedures
when forced to guess at the distribution of
party support across social groupings in the
absence of survey data or other breakdowns.
Typically, the researcher would confront an
empty table, with the social groups arrayed
across the top and the parties along the side.
From available data on the country, the
researcher would enter these marginal values-the
percentage distribution of the groups in the
society across the bottom and the percentage
strength of the parties along the side.
Operating under these constraints, the
researcher would then choose the cell entries
that best conformed to his or her assessment of
the sources of parties' strength and the nature
of the parties' composition.
- 2 The "relevant"
N for the calculation of attraction AC codes is
the total number of cases for each subgroup of
the cultural differentiator that constitutes the
base for computing percentages of support for
each party. The mean AC code over all subgroups
in a given table is assigned to each party in
the table as the final attraction AC code. The
relevant N for concentration and reflection AC
codes is the total number of party supporters in
the survey that constitutes the base for
computing percentages of contributions to the
party composition.
|
The marginal totals for the rows of this matrix were then
fixed at the percentage distribution of the parties'
strength, which was often taken from election returns. The
marginal totals for the columns of this matrix were then
fixed at the percentage breakdown across the cultural
differentiator, which was commonly obtained from population
census data. For a hypothetical country, the marginal row
totals might be 30-50-20 percent representing the relative
strength of its three parties, whereas the marginal column
totals might be 20 percent Catholic and 80 percent
Protestant for its breakdown on religion as a cultural
differentiator. These column and row percentages then
constrained our guesses of the party support pattern as we
estimated internal cell entries, which had to total to the
fixed row and column marginals. In the case of the less
developed countries with sizable proportions of the
population completely uninvolved in political matters, we
often had to add to our party groupings a "nonpartisan" or
"noninvolved" category to permit reasonable allocations of
support among the parties within the constraints of the
population distribution across the cultural
differentiator.
Our guesses as to the appropriate internal cell entries
were informed by statements in the literature-often quite
vague-about the party "being backed by the Catholic church"
or "receiving the votes of most of the Protestants." We
culled the literature in our files for such statements of
party support and then tried to translate them into
quantitative terms that, when viewed in relationship to one
another within the party system, would satisfy the marginal
constraints reflecting the political and social
characteristics of the society. No doubt, few if any of our
specific figures for party support coded in this
impressionistic manner are exactly correct. The objective of
our scoring, however, is not so much the accuracy of
specific estimates as faithfulness in reflecting the support
patterns of parties relative to one another within a
country. For those who wish that we had not been so
"creative" in our coding of party support combining
impressionistic judgments with hard
|