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A Note on the Ambiguous Meanings of Survey Research Measures Which Use the Words “Left” and “Right”*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

R. L. Ogmundson
R. L. Ogmundson
Affiliation:
University of Victoria
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Extract

Perhaps the most important concept in wide use by social scientists for the analysis of political attitudes and behaviour has been the left-right dimension. Not surprisingly therefore, the terms “left” and “right” themselves have been used in survey research on public opinion in Canada, and have subsequently been central to the data analysis of several recent articles on Canadian politics. Important to these papers has been the assumption that the terms “left” and “right” are understood by the average Canadian in such a manner that data gathered in response to questions using these terms will be valid. This paper argues that this assumption is mistaken.

Type
Note
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 1979 , pp. 799 - 806
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1979

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References

1 See, for example, Downs, A., An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957)Google Scholar; Alford, R., Party and Society (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963)Google Scholar; and Laponce, J., “In Search of the Stable Elements of the Left-Right Landscape,” Comparative Politics 4 (1972), 455–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For a recent example of the useful operationalization of the concept, see Zipp, John F., “Left-Right Dimensions of Canadian Federal Party Identification: A Discriminant Analysis,” this JOURNAL 11 (1978), 251–77Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, Barnes, Samuel, “Left, Right, and the Italian Voter,” Comparative Political Studies 4 (1971), 157–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See, for example, Laponce, Jean, “A Note on the Use of the Left-Right Dimension,” Comparative Political Studies 2 (1969), 481–502CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 The classic here, of course, is Converse, P., “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” in Apter, D. (ed.), Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press, 1964), 206–61Google Scholar. See also Campbell, A. et al., The American Voter (New York, 1960)Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., 215; see also Butler, D. and Stokes, D., Political Change in Britain (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1969), 207, 212, 214Google Scholar.

7 Meisel, John, “Party Images in Canada: A Report on Work in Progress,” in Meisel, J., Working Papers on Canadian Politics (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1972), 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Kay, Barry, “An Examination of Class and Left-Right Images in Canadian Voting,” this JOURNAL 10 (1977), 127–43Google Scholar.

9 See, for example, Ronald D. Lambert and Alfred A. Hunter, “Social Stratification, Voting Behaviour, and the Images of Canadian Federal Political Parties,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, forthcoming (MS, 19). Other precise references are provided later in the text.

It was also my distinct impression that the weakness of this measure was part of the widely understood informal wisdom around the University of Michigan Political Science and Sociology departments from 1968 to 1972. As a consequence, I used the more concrete term “for the working class—for the middle class” in my own research using the party image data. See Ogmundson, R. L., “Social Class and Canadian Politics: A Reinterpretation” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, 1972), 63–65Google Scholar.

10 Meisel, “Party Images in Canada,” 69.

11 Ibid., 83.

12 Elkins, D., “The Perceived Structure of the Canadian Party Systems,” this Journal 7 (1974), 507Google Scholar.

13 Meisel, Working Papers, Table 1.

14 Elkins, “The Perceived Structure of the Canadian Party Systems,” 510.

15 Kay, “An Examination of Class.”

16 Elkins, “The Perceived Structure of the Canadian Party Systems,” 522.

17 Kay, “An Examination of Class,” 138–42.

18 Ibid., 141.

19 Ronald D. Lambert and Alfred A. Hunter, “Social Stratification.”

20 In my view this led them to give too much weight to a re-calculation of the class vote using “left-right” (as opposed to “middle class/working class”) party image as an intervening variable.

21 Ibid., 20, 28.

22 This position is argued extensively elsewhere. See Ogmundson, R., “Mass-Elite Linkages and Class Issues in Canada,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 13(1976), 1–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar,and “On Two Modes of Interpretation of Survey Data: A Comment on Schreiber,” Social Forces 55 (1977), 809–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Such research might try to ascertain the degree to which the terms are viewed as irrelevant as well as the degree to which they are familiar to the general public, and the ways in which they are understood by which groups of people. Furthermore, it might also try to determine whether some form of “working class authoritarianism” accounts for results that I have viewed as “anomalous.”

24 For example, Jean Laponce had an interviewing experience similar to mine when surveying in Vancouver in 1963. This led him to drop aquestion on Left-Right after the pilot study because of lack of understanding. See Laponce, J., People vs Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), 22Google Scholar.

25 Dissensus exists, not only in the general public, but among the academics themselves. To illustrate, both Professor Meisel and Professor Kay are dubious about my assumption that ‘for the working class/for the middle class” may be taken as a crude equivalent to “Left Wing/Right Wing.”

26 For example, the work of Professor Elkins in his article, “The Perceived Structure of the Canadian Party Systems,” fairly clearly indicates that “left-right” is an inadequate or at least incomplete basis for descriptions of the party systems as perceived by the Canadian public.