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Measuring Politicians' Values: Administration and Assessment of a Ranking Technique in the British House of Commons*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Donald D. Searing
Donald D. Searing*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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Abstract

Despite their prominence in political affairs, values have rarely been studied through survey research. This article offers groundwork for quantitative investigations of politicians' values by describing the development, administration and assessment of a ranking technique in the British House of Commons. It uses tape-recorded interviews which suggest that values are intelligible components of politicians' belief systems and help identify difficulties in conceptualizing and measuring them. The ranking instrument employed to measure values demonstrates its adequacy by reproducing familiar cleavages between political camps, distinguishing ideological party factions and generating data related to themes MPs put forward when discussing institutions and policy problems.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 65 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1978

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Anthony King, Robert Putnam amd Milton Rokeach for their helpful comments on a previous version of this article. The research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (18497–01) and the National Science Foundation (SOC 71–03575 A03).

References

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2 McGuire, William J., “The Nature of Attitudes and Attitude Change,” in Handbook of Social Psychology, 2nd ed., ed. Lindzey, Gardner and Aronson, Elliot (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1969), III, pp. 147–48Google Scholar. See also Greenstein, Fred I., Personality and Politics. Chicago: Markham, 1969)Google Scholar and Lane, Robert E., Political Thinking and Consciousness. Chicago: Markham, 1969), pp. 20–22Google Scholar.

3 Thurstone, L. L., “The Method of Paired Comparisons for Social Values,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 21 (1927), 384–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Dukes, William F., “Psychological Studies of Values,” Psychological Bulletin, 52 (1955), 24–50CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Pittel, Stephen M. and Mendelsohn, Gerald A., “Measurement of Moral Values: A Review and Critique,” Psychological Bulletin, 66 (1966), 22–35CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

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5 Examples include Erwin C. Hargrove's report on goals and ideals: “Values and Change: A Comparison of Young Elites in England and America,” Political Studies, 17 (September 1969), 339–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zaninovich's, M. George measures which include evaluative criteria and assumptions about human nature: “Elites and Citizenry in Yugoslav Society: A Study of Value Differentiation,” in Comparative Communist Political Leadership, ed. Beck, Carl (New York: McKay, 1973), pp. 226–97.Google Scholar

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10 This seems to be the point of Clyde Kluckhohn's distinction between “The desired” and “The desirable”: Kluckhohn, p. 394. In constructing measures of criteria people apply in their evaluations, some studies operationalize values not as goals but rather as assumptions about human nature (e.g., “Man is trustworthy and perfectible”) which are believed to be influential determinants of behavior. See, Kluckhohn, Florence Rockwood and Strodtbeck, Fred I., Variations in Value Orientations. Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson, 1961), pp. 1–48Google Scholar.

11 Kluckhohn, p. 397.

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15 There have been several attempts to identify value categories relevant to all cultures: Rokeach, Beliefs, Attitudes and Values; Lasswell and Kaplan, Power and Society; and Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, Variations in Value Orientations. This approach runs the risk of constructing items which are so diffuse that they encompass everything, but, by the same token, may be related to few other beliefs and behaviors in any given political culture or political system.

16 Denitch, Bogdan, “Elite Interviewing and Social Structure: An Example from Yugoslavia,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 36 (Summer 1972), 149CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In order to insure that most of the important values have been identified, a considerable number of members would have to be interviewed.

17 The most useful scholarly commentaries were: Beer, Samuel H., British Politics in the Collectivist Age (New York: Knopf, 1965)Google Scholar; Blondel, Jean, Voters, Parties and Leaders. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963)Google Scholar; Mackintosh, John P., The British Cabinet, 2nd ed. (New York: Praeger, 1964)Google Scholar; McKenzie, Robert T., British Political Parties, 2nd ed. (New York: Praeger, 1964)Google Scholar; Richards, Peter G., Honourable Members. London: Faber, 1959)Google Scholar; Finer, S. E., Berrington, H. B. and Bartholomew, D. J., Backbench Opinion in the House of Commons (Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Rose, Richard, Politics in England (Boston: Little Brown, 1964)Google Scholar; Pulzer, Peter G. J., Political Representation and Elections in Britain. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1972)Google Scholar; Christoph, James B., “Consensus and Cleavage in British Political Ideology,” American Political Science Review, 59 (September 1965), 629–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Potter, Allen, “Great Britain: Opposition with a Capital ‘O,’ ” in Political Opposition in Western Democracies, ed. Dahl, Robert A. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 3–33Google Scholar.

18 Rokeach, Beliefs, Attitudes and Values and The Nature of Human Values.

19 Rokeach, , The Nature of Human Values, p. 30Google Scholar.

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21 The benefits and costs are reviewed by Aberbach, Joel D., Chesney, James D. and Rockman, Bert A., “Exploring Elite Political Attitudes: Some Methodological Lessons,” Political Methodology, 2 (Winter 1975), 1–27Google Scholar. On the advantages of conversational interviewing see also, Dexter, Lewis Anthony, Elite and Specialized Interviewing. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

22 It is often suggested that values are arranged in hierarchies; that values nearest the top are given first priority in guiding behavior and take precedence over those below them in the event of value conflict. Woodruff, Asahel D. and DiVesta, Francis J., “The Relationship Between Values, Concepts and Attitudes,” Educational and Psychological Measurement, 8 (Winter 1948), 646CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kluckhohn, and Strodtbeck, , Variations in Value Orientations, p. 30Google Scholar; and Rokeach, Beliefs, Attitudes and Values.

23 Rokeach, The Nature of Human Values; cf. the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental values in Lasswell, and Kaplan, , Power and Society, pp. 16–17Google Scholar.

24 Rokeach, The Nature of Human Values. By contrast, Kluckholn argues that means values, including ways of acting, are regarded as just as important as ends: “Values and Value-Orientations in the Theory of Action,” pp. 403–13.

25 Rokeach, , Belief, Attitudes and Values, p. 26Google Scholar. It could be claimed that the value ranking form taps implicit as well as explicit values. A more cautious assessment would be that, in addition to measuring highly salient values, the instrument directs the subject's attention to others which, though prevalent in his sub-culture, he himself does not usually discuss.

26 Social scientists' forms–whether checklists, ranking exercises or Likert scales–have never been the highlights of a tired politician's week. See, Hunt, William H., Crane, Wilder W. and Wahlke, John C., “Interviewing Political Elites in Cross-Cultural Comparative Research,” American Journal of Sociology, 70 (July 1964), 59–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 According to Dexter, , Elite and Specialized Interviewing, p. 36Google Scholar, one of the few satisfactions interviews offer elite respondents is the opportunity to teach someone, to explain matters about which interviewers know little and interviewees have the wisdom of experience. The value-ranking exercise, in the eyes of some MPs, apparently reversed these anticipated roles. An extreme example of the interviewee-as-teacher role is described by Zuckerman, Harriet whose Nobel laureates peppered her with a stream of competence tests throughout their interviews: “Interviewing an Ultra Elite,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 36 (Summer 1972), 159–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Larsen, Donald N., “Rokeach in Linguistic Perspective,” Review of Religious Research, 11 (Winter 1970), 146–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Rokeach, , The Nature of Human Values, p. 30Google Scholar.

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32 Rokeach, , The Nature of Human Values, pp. 40–41Google Scholar.

33 Besides social desirability effects, the researcher's presence may have other unanticipated consequences. In most cases interviewers watched respondents rank the values and were available to answer questions, albeit they were prepared to use pre-arranged answers wherever possible and avoid giving direction and structure. Rokeach reports an experiment which found no difference between rankings carried out privately and others done with experimenters in the room (ibid., p. 306). Again, there is reason to believe that members of Parliament, compared with undergraduates or the general public, are less disposed to react to an academic interviewer by altering responses that might have been recorded privately.

34 Rokeach, , Beliefs, Attitudes and Values, p. 169Google Scholar; and The Nature of Human Values, pp. 30–34.

35 For example, a Tory who was baffled by the “Social Hierarchy” label described its intended meaning very clearly in answering a later question: “I do not believe in a classless society. You've got to have a hierarchy. And the hierarchy I hope will be based on merit. But you can't get rid of the hierarchy or you have a scramble.” This respondent appears to hold the value but did not recognize its label in the instrument.

36 A series of studies, largely American, have demonstrated that ranked values produce substantial and meaningful contrasts among groups differentiated by age, occupation, education, race, income and religion. Similarly, values measured by Rokeach's instrument have been related to a variety of beliefs including attitudes toward the Vietnam War and civil rights demonstrations, and to behaviors such as church attendance and joining civil rights organizations. See, Rokeach, Beliefs, Attitudes and Values and The Nature of Human Values.

37 Allport, G., Vernon, P. and Lindzey, G., Study of Values, 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970)Google Scholar.

38 The items are: Do you think the government should have the authority to curb strikes, or should it not have this authority? Do you feel the government should spend more on pensions, spend less, or should spending for pensions remain about as it is now? There is a lot of talk about nationalizing industry. Alternative views range from nationalizing many more industries to denationalizing many of the industries now nationalized. What do you feel should be done?

39 Beer, British Politics in the Colfectivist Age; Potter, “Great Britain: Opposition with a Capital ‘O.’ ”

40 For project purposes unrelated to this validity analysis, candidates fighting losing causes, usually as a service to their party, were isolated from the population. Similar considerations also excluded former members of Parliament, thus reducing the sampling frame to candidates who had never been MPs and who came closest to entering Parliament in 1970. From their ranks was drawn a random sample of 120 individuals, 89 percent of whom were interviewed and filled in the same value form as did MPs.

41 See, for example, Johnson, Paul, “What is a Socialist?” New Statesman (29 September 1972), 421–22Google Scholar; and Raison, Timothy, “What is a Tory?” New Statesman (6 October 1972), 463–64Google Scholar.

42 See footnote 17.

43 Bottomore, T. B., Elites and Society. New York: Basic Books, 1964)Google Scholar; Beer, British Politics in the Collectivist Age. Equality is also the key value which orders Americans along a left-right dimension: Rokeach, The Nature of Human Values.

44 Crosland, C. A. R., The Future of Socialism, rev. ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1963)Google Scholar.

45 The conservative perspective is: “I think God in his infinite wisdom gave it to no man to know how to solve every problem … different groups of people warring with one another over different ideas is a much more efficient system than somebody who plans from above and says, ‘Well boys, here are the tablets; now you can do it this way.’ ”

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