Survey respondents were asked in almost the same language for a self-assessment and for an assessment of several hypothetical persons described by written vignettes. The vignettes for one particular domain of political efficacy were the following:
xsay1: ``[Alison] lacks clean drinking water. She and her neighbors are supporting an opposition candidate in the forthcoming elections that has promised to address the issue. It appears that so many people in her area feel the same way that the opposition candidate will defeat the incumbent representative.'' xsay2: ``[Imelda] lacks clean drinking water. She and her neighbors are drawing attention to the issue by collecting signatures on a petition. They plan to present the petition to each of the political parties before the upcoming election.'' xsay3: ``[Jane] lacks clean drinking water because the government is pursuing an industrial development plan. In the campaign for an upcoming election, an opposition party has promised to address the issue, but she feels it would be futile to vote for the opposition since the government is certain to win.'' xsay4: ``[Toshiro] lacks clean drinking water. There is a group of local leaders who could do something about the problem, but they have said that industrial development is the most important policy right now instead of clean water.'' xsay5: ``[Moses] lacks clean drinking water. He would like to change this, but he can't vote, and feels that no one in the government cares about this issue. So he suffers in silence, hoping something will be done in the future.''
The following question is then read to the respondent for each vignette and for a self-assessment: How much say [does `name' / do you] have in getting the government to address issues that interest [him / her / you]?
For the self-assessment and each of the vignette questions, respondents are given the same set of ordinal categories in which to respond, for example ``(5) Unlimited say, (4) A lot of say, (3) Some say, (2) Little say, (1) No say at all.''
Additional notes:
1. omits cases with missing values for demographics china,age,male,educyrs
2. but retains cases with missing question responses MISSING RESPONSES ARE included as ZEROES in xsayself,xsay1,xsay2,xsay3,xsay4,xsay5
3. Number of cases:
1. N = 5080 (stacked data, one obs per person-question) 2. Number of unique id values in each country with valid responses CHN MEX Total 371 + 551 = 922
4. Mapping of responses to values: "no say at all" 1 "little say" 2 "some say" 3 "a lot of say" 4 "unlimited say" 5
data(poleff)