Abstract
Conducting quantitative research (e.g., surveys, a large number of interviews, experiments) with the participation of political elites is typically challenging. Given that a population of political elites is typically small by definition, a particular challenge is obtaining a sufficiently high number of observations and, thus, a certain response rate. This paper focuses on two questions related to this challenge: (1) What are best practices for designing the study? And (2) what are best practices for soliciting the participation of political elites? To arrive at these best practices, we (a) examine which factors explain the variation in response rates across surveys within and between large-scale, multi-wave survey projects by statistically analyzing a newly compiled dataset of 342 political elite surveys from eight projects, spanning 30 years and 58 countries, (b) integrate the typically scattered findings from the existing literature and (c) discuss results from an original expert survey among researchers with experience with such research (n = 23). By compiling a comprehensive list of best practices, systematically testing some widely held believes about response rates and by providing benchmarks for response rates depending on country, survey mode and elite type, we aim to facilitate future studies where participation of political elites is required. This will contribute to our knowledge and understanding of political elites’ opinions, information processing and decision making and thereby of the functioning of representative democracies.
Highlights
Having knowledge and understanding of the opinions and attitudes of political elites and of how they process information or take decisions, is key for political scientists
Our analysis focuses on four core variables that emerged from the existing literature and our expert survey on which we could collect data: (1) survey mode, (2) elite level, (3) country in which survey is fielded, and (4) year of the survey
We only explore the main differences between survey modes: is the survey mainly distributed by mail (n = 84 surveys), online (n = 104), both mail and online (n = 47)9 or face-to-face (n = 98)? We created a “mixed”-category for the 10 surveys that did not fit these categories
Summary
Having knowledge and understanding of the opinions and attitudes of political elites (e.g., members of parliament, party leaders, local politicians) and of how they process information or take decisions, is key for political scientists Obtaining this information may require conducting research with political elites as participants. Since the population of political elites is usually small by definition, a certain response rate is required to achieve a sample size that allows for meaningful statistical analysis Against this backdrop, one of the key challenges when conducting quantitative studies with the participation of political elites is obtaining a sufficiently high response rate. The population of political elites is small, but getting them to participate may be difficult because they have busy schedules and are regularly shielded by gatekeepers (Druckman and Lupia 2012; Hoffmann-Lange 2008) Of source, the latter issue is faced by quantitative and qualitative researchers alike. We lack systematic knowledge on what are the best practices for: (1) designing the study, such as what survey mode to use (e.g. face-to-face or online), what type of questions to use (closed vs. open) and when to field the study?; and (2) soliciting the participation of political elites. Our study will provide such knowledge, which is indispensable for addressing the challenge of obtaining a sufficiently high response rate
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