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Category: Project

Description: Since the inception of the ISSP’s Role of Government module, many scholars assumed that the ‘ideal role’ question battery measured the effects of a single underlying latent attitude. Roughly speaking, an attitude toward the ideal role of government socio-economic intervention. Those attempting to measure and substantiate this assumption offer sparse confirmatory evidence. Therefore, this research brings the largest amount of data and the most comprehensive measurement models thus far to investigate the existence of a singular ideal role attitude. The data from 1986-2017 in 43 countries suggests that there is a latent ideal role attitude; however, measurement varies somewhat by historical institutions and levels of development in a given society. At a singular underlying latent factor to measure this attitude does not fit the observed data so well. When applying corrections for a potential second attitude toward social insurance, GDP, and categorical variables reflecting socialism and Communist authoritarianism, a singular late factor comes into focus and explains the data to a degree that all but the most extreme critics find acceptable.