This paper develops a dynamic discrete choice framework for multiple attitudes to identify which attitudes are most influential within an attitude system and to distinguish sources of stability and instability. The model accommodates ordinal attitudinal measures, time-varying gaps between interviews, and a multiple-factor structure to capture time-invariant individual traits. The authors apply the approach to five core political attitudes and to issue attitudes about government spending and immigration, preserving qualifications about the roles of permanent heterogeneity and transitory shocks.
Data and methods
The study uses a dynamic discrete choice model for multiple attitudes, with a multiple-factor structure to capture time-invariant individual characteristics and explicit treatment of ordinal response scales and heterogeneous time intervals across survey waves and respondents. The abstract emphasizes distinguishing different sources of (in)stability and estimating directional spillovers between attitudes.
Main findings
Most variance in the five core political attitudes reflects infrequently changing individual characteristics and time-specific effects, while permanent heterogeneity is modest. External efficacy is identified as most influential for evaluations of the external political world, and internal efficacy for views about one’s role in politics. Party and ideological identifications are described as stable, largely time-invariant traits; issue attitudes (e.g., toward government spending and immigration) appear unstable and driven mainly by transitory shocks.
Dynamic discrete choice framework Accounts for ordinal responses Distinguishes permanent versus transitory variance
- External efficacy influences evaluations of the political world; internal efficacy influences views of one’s political role.
- Party identification is reported as the most influential through spillovers to ideology; issue attitudes show mostly transitory variation.
