Political knowledge relevant for voting

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Bettina Westle
• Subject Area: Political Science ; Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2012 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 227420052

This application contains the following major goals: 1) Resume analyses of data gained by the project Election-relevant political knowledge: analyses of a) data generated by a representative survey of German electoral population before the German national election in 2013 on levels, distribution, determinants and consequences of political factual knowledge, b) analyses of the follow up panel wave and c) analyses of several minor quasi-experimental online-surveys about methodical problems of the investigation and evaluation of political knowledge items. (2) Deepening of specific topics, especially concerning the so called correct voting resp. position-consistent voting, based on an online survey shortly before the German national election 2017 utilizing the Wahl-O-Mat-statements. (3) Focus on measurement instruments and analyses of guessing regarding knowledge questions using two (quasi-) experimental online-surveys. (4) Expansion of the previous approach by a stronger emphasis on heuristics of decision making in politics based on (quasi-) experimental designs containing framing cues concerning (a) effects of demographic attributes on the sense of representativeness, (b) effects of demographic attributes in comparison to political cues on the sense of representativeness and (c) evaluations of competence, (d) examination of the propensity to use political or apolitical heuristics. Furthermore effects of the opinion of the majority and attitudes in the personal network will be studied. In all of these cases political knowledge is to be measured, as it is assumed to play a major mediating role regarding effects of heuristics.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants