Estimating the size of measurement errors of the Satisfaction With Democracy survey indicator for different scales, countries and languages

Abstract

The Satisfaction With Democracy (SWD) indicator is often used in research. However, while there is debate about which concept it measures, the discussion about the size of its measurement errors (how well it measures the underlying concept) is scarce. Nonetheless, measurement errors can affect the results and threaten comparisons across studies/countries/languages. Thus, in this paper, we estimated the measurement quality (complement of measurement errors) of the SWD indicator for seven response scales across 38 country-language groups, using multitrait-multimethod experiments from the European Social Survey. Results show that measurement errors explain from 16% (11-point scale) to 54% (4-point scale) of the variance in the observed responses. We also provide insights to improve questionnaires and evaluate the indicator’s comparability across scales/countries/languages.