Measuring political knowledge: development and testing the scale in Russia

Abstract

To our knowledge, this is the first paper which develops and validates the scale of political knowledge in Russia. The scale was validated in a telephone survey using random sampling (N = 3002). The scale includes 10 questions on the knowledge of political institutes, main political actors, substantial events, international politics, and history of the state. The scale showed sufficiently high internal consistency. Cronbach’s alpha was equal to 0.74. In addition, the criterion and convergent validity of the instrument was tested based on socio-demographic variables, interest in politics, news discussion, media consumption, and political behavior. We found weak and medium Pearson correlation coefficients between political knowledge and socio-demographic variables. Convergent validity shows weak and medium correlation coefficients between political knowledge and interest in politics, frequency of discussion of political news, and media consumption. The strongest correlation was found with interest in politics. In addition, we found a positive correlation between political knowledge and such forms of political behavior as turnout at State Duma elections, signing petitions, and participating in campaigning. Finally, the IRT (Item-Response Theory) results showed quite a high quality of the scale. Overall, we conclude that this scale can be used to measure political knowledge in Russia.