QuestionLink construct report: Political interest

Construct usage and definition

Instruments measuring political interest have been used since the early 1950s in most general social science surveys (van Deth, 1990). It is a frequently used concept across several disciplines such as political science, sociology, and educational research (Neller, 2002).

Political interest can be defined as the “[…] degree to which politics arouses a citizen’s curiosity.” (van Deth, 1990, p. 278). Political interest also has characteristics of a personality trait, since the level of political interest is relatively stable within a person, but varies substantially across different persons (Robinson, 2016). Political interest is a central concept in political science, as high political interest is connected to higher levels of political involvement and more stable attitudinal patterns towards politics (van Deth, 1990).

Which instruments were chosen?

We chose instruments that capture subjective political interest. In survey research, political interest is usually measured with a single item asking directly about respondents’ subjective political interest (Neller, 2002): For example “Wie stark interessieren Sie sich für Politik?” (“How strong is your interest in politics?”) (Neller, 2002, p. 490). The exact question formulation, number of response options and response labels differ slightly from survey to survey, but there is little doubt that they capture a very similar substantive meaning (van Deth, 1990; Neller, 2002). There are also multi-item instruments that measure political interest (Shani, 2011; Otto & Bacherle, 2011). However, all survey programs included in QuestionLink use single-item instruments.

Overview of data sources

This table lists and links the data sets or cumulations used for the current construct. For more detailed information including variable names to download the data yourself, see the next section.

Instrument data sources

The table below makes it easy to access data for a specific instrument, since it lists the survey, wave, year, and the respective variable name. Please note that some surveys only have one variable name across several years, whereas other surveys have different variable names per wave.

Please use the filter function by clicking the filter input fields under each column name.

References

Neller, K. (2002). Politisches Interesse. In Handwörterbuch zur politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (pp. 489–494). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-80358-0_88

Otto, L., & Bacherle, P. (2011). Politisches Interesse Kurzskala (PIKS) – Entwicklung und Validierung. Politische Psychologie, 1(1), 19–35.

Robison, J. (2017). The Social Rewards of Engagement: Appealing to Social Motivations to Stimulate Political Interest at High and Low Levels of External Efficacy. Political Studies, 65(1), 24–41. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321715619431

Shani, D. (2011). Measuring Political Interest. In Improving public opinion surveys: Interdisciplinary innovation and the American national election studies (pp. 137–157).

van Deth, J. W. (1990). 9 Interest in Politics. In M. K. Jennings & J. W. van Deth (Eds.), Continuities in Political Action (pp. 275–312). DE GRUYTER.