| 1. |
- Ahlskog, Rafael, et al.
(författare)
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Quantifying Bias from Measurable and Unmeasurable Confounders Across Three Domains of Individual Determinants of Political Preferences
- 2023
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Ingår i: Political Analysis. - : Cambridge University Press. - 1047-1987 .- 1476-4989. ; 31:2, s. 181-194
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A core part of political research is to identify how political preferences are shaped. The nature of these questions is such that robust causal identification is often difficult to achieve, and we are not seldom stuck with observational methods that we know have limited causal validity. The purpose of this paper is to measure the magnitude of bias stemming from both measurable and unmeasurable confounders across three broad domains of individual determinants of political preferences: socio-economic factors, moral values, and psychological constructs. We leverage a unique combination of rich Swedish registry data for a large sample of identical twins, with a comprehensive battery of 34 political preference measures, and build a meta-analytical model comparing our most conservative observational (naive) estimates with discordant twin estimates. This allows us to infer the amount of bias from unobserved genetic and shared environmental factors that remains in the naive models for our predictors, while avoiding precision issues common in family-based designs. The results are sobering: in most cases, substantial bias remains in naive models. A rough heuristic is that about half of the effect size even in conservative observational estimates is composed of confounding.
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| 2. |
- Cronert, Axel, 1986-, et al.
(författare)
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A General Approach to Measuring Electoral Competitiveness for Parties and Governments
- 2021
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Ingår i: Political Analysis. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 1047-1987 .- 1476-4989. ; 29:3, s. 337-355
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We develop a general approach to measuring electoral competitiveness for parties and governments, which is distinct from existing approaches in two ways. First, it allows us to estimate the actual probability of re-electing the incumbent into office, which lies closer to the theoretical concept of interest than most widely used proxies. Second, it incorporates both pre-electoral competitiveness—that is, the uncertainty about the outcome of the upcoming election—and post-electoral competitiveness—that is, the uncertainty concerning who will form the government given a certain election result. The approach can be applied to, and compared across, a multitude of institutional settings and is particularly advantageous in analyses of multiparty democracies. To demonstrate its full potential, we first apply the approach on 1,700 local government elections in Sweden. Three advantages over existing approaches are documented: Our election probability measure shows substantial variation over the election cycle, it can be accurately measured for a single party as well as a government, and it is more capable of predicting re-election into office than any previous measure of electoral competitiveness. A second application on 400 national elections in 34 democracies shows that the approach also works well in a more challenging cross-national setting.
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| 3. |
- Marquardt, Kyle L., 1983, et al.
(författare)
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IRT Models for Expert-Coded Panel Data
- 2018
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Ingår i: Political Analysis. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 1047-1987 .- 1476-4989. ; 26:4, s. 431-456
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Data sets quantifying phenomena of social-scientific interest often use multiple experts to code latent concepts. While it remains standard practice to report the average score across experts, experts likely vary in both their expertise and their interpretation of question scales. As a result, the mean may be an inaccurate statistic. Item-response theory (IRT) models provide an intuitive method for taking these forms of expert disagreement into account when aggregating ordinal ratings produced by experts, but they have rarely been applied to cross-national expert-coded panel data. We investigate the utility of IRT models for aggregating expert-coded data by comparing the performance of various IRT models to the standard practice of reporting average expert codes, using both data from the V-Dem data set and ecologically motivated simulated data. We find that IRT approaches outperform simple averages when experts vary in reliability and exhibit differential item functioning (DIF). IRT models are also generally robust even in the absence of simulated DIF or varying expert reliability. Our findings suggest that producers of cross-national data sets should adopt IRT techniques to aggregate expert-coded data measuring latent concepts.
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| 4. |
- McMann, Kelly, et al.
(författare)
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Assessing Data Quality: An Approach and An Application
- 2022
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Ingår i: Political Analysis. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 1047-1987 .- 1476-4989. ; 30, s. 426-449
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Political scientists routinely face the challenge of assessing the quality (validity and reliability) of measures in order to use them in substantive research. While stand-alone assessment tools exist, researchers rarely combine them comprehensively. Further, while a large literature informs data producers, data consumers lack guidance on how to assess existing measures for use in substantive research. We delineate a three-component practical approach to data quality assessment that integrates complementary multimethod tools to assess: (1) content validity; (2) the validity and reliability of the data generation process; and (3) convergent validity. We apply our quality assessment approach to the corruption measures from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, both illustrating our rubric and unearthing several quality advantages and disadvantages of the V-Dem measures, compared to other existing measures of corruption.
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| 5. |
- Kyle, R. A., et al.
(författare)
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Monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) and smoldering (asymptomatic) multiple myeloma: IMWG consensus perspectives risk factors for progression and guidelines for monitoring and management
- 2010
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Ingår i: Leukemia. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1476-5551 .- 0887-6924. ; 24:6, s. 1121-1127
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) was identified in 3.2% of 21 463 residents of Olmsted County, Minnesota, 50 years of age or older. The risk of progression to multiple myeloma, Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia, AL amyloidosis or a lymphoproliferative disorder is approximately 1% per year. Low-risk MGUS is characterized by having an M protein < 15 g/l, IgG type and a normal free light chain (FLC) ratio. Patients should be followed with serum protein electrophoresis at six months and, if stable, can be followed every 2-3 years or when symptoms suggestive of a plasma cell malignancy arise. Patients with intermediate and high-risk MGUS should be followed in 6 months and then annually for life. The risk of smoldering (asymptomatic) multiple myeloma (SMM) progressing to multiple myeloma or a related disorder is 10% per year for the first 5 years, 3% per year for the next 5 years and 1-2% per year for the next 10 years. Testing should be done 2-3 months after the initial recognition of SMM. If the results are stable, the patient should be followed every 4-6 months for 1 year and, if stable, every 6-12 months. Leukemia (2010) 24, 1121-1127; doi:10.1038/leu.2010.60; published online 22 April 2010
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| 6. |
- Cameron, Raquel, et al.
(författare)
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Mortality risk increased in colonic diverticular disease : a nationwide cohort study
- 2022
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Ingår i: Annals of Epidemiology. - : Elsevier. - 1047-2797 .- 1873-2585. ; 76, s. 39-49
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Introduction: There are limited population cohort data on overall and cause-specific mortality in colonic diverticular disease.Objective: To measure overall and cause-specific mortality in colonic diverticular disease, compared to matched reference individuals and siblings.Methods: Population-based cohort study ("the ESPRESSO study") in Sweden. There were 97,850 cases with a medical diagnosis of diverticular disease (defined by international classification of disease codes) and colorectal histology identified in 1987-2017 from histopathology reports. The mortality risk between individuals with colonic diverticular disease and matched reference individuals ( n = 453/634) from the general population was determined. Cox regression models adjusted for comorbidity estimated hazard ratios (HRs) for all-cause mortality.
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