Online panel survey
The new survey will be designed as a two-wave panel study, administered online to representative samples of adult populations in Austria, Poland, and Slovenia. Given the duration of the project from January 2023 to December 2025, we plan the survey for October/November 2024 (first wave) and February/March 2025 (second wave). The two panel waves are relatively close to each other to reduce the likelihood of major events between the waves, as well as to increase respondent retention rates. The survey dates were chosen to avoid elections in the participating countries, so that our study covers “normal times” as much as possible (this is also the reason we chose to collect new data instead of relying on projects that collect election surveys; the latter will still be used as part of secondary data analysis, which we describe later). During the project, parliamentary elections are expected in the fall of 2023 in Poland. In Austria, while the full parliamentary term in Austria ends in 2024, pre-term elections are generally expected in autumn 2022, based on the current situation with a prolonged crisis of the larger coalition party ÖVP since autumn 2021. It is worth noting that pre-term elections are possible in all three countries. While the regulations regarding setting the dates of pre-term elections vary by country, we expect to know between 1.5 (Poland) and three months (Austria) in advance, which would give us sufficient time to react to such events.
The panel survey, i.e., repeated measurements of the same respondents at two different time points, will enable us to better distinguish the direction of the effect, whether polarization shapes participation, or the other way around. While not sufficient to establish causality, panel data nevertheless provide better evidence compared to more commonly used cross-sectional or repeated cross-sectional surveys.
Protest surveys
General population surveys are not well suited for studying rare phenomena. Thus, based on general population surveys, it is often impossible to study protest participants in-depth. Consequently, much of the research on political participation (whether in connection to polarization or in general) is limited to voting, which is arguably easier to measure and analyze. Therefore, we will collect data among participants at protests to examine (1) to what extent polarization is part of their motivation to participate, (2) differences between protest participants and the general population, and (3) differences between protest participants depending on the type and theme issue of the protest activity.
Secondary analysis
A large portion of the project will consist of analyses of existing data from cross-national multi-wave survey projects: European Social Survey, European Values Study, World Values Survey, Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, European Elections Studies, and others. These data will provide the basis for longitudinal models of (1) the effects of polarization on participation rates; (2) age, period, and cohort effects on institutional and non-institutional participation; (3) differences in the relative importance of polarization versus other determinants of participation (resources, political culture, or mobilization networks), and differences in their role across countries and changes over time. The emphasis in the analysis of secondary cross-national multi-wave survey data will be on longitudinal effects and differences between Central European countries and Western Europe.
Copyright ©2023 POPAPOL. All rights reserved.