Response Validity in Surveys of Voting Behavior

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This paper presents the results of a project which validated the reported registration and voting behavior of respondents in a national election study. The accuracy of reported voting behavior in the 1976 general election is assessed in terms of the demographic characteristics of the respondents to the Center for Political Studies National Election Study as well as the extent of their participation in a survey panel begun in 1972. Increased levels of registration and turnout are observed in association with the number of interviews in which respondents participated, and three alternative social psychological models of the effects of preelection interviews are evaluated. Although the apparently served as a stimulus to voting, neither a model associated with self-concept theory nor alienation theory appears to explain the phenomenon adequately. The is significant and appears to be cumulative, indicating that researchers using the survey method with panel designs should be sensitive to the effects of their method on the behavior which they are trying to measure. Michael W. Traugott is Study Director in the Center for Political Studies and Lecturer in the Department of Political Science, and John P. Katosh is Assistant Study Director in the Center for Political Studies, The University of Michigan. Portions of the data utilized in this research were made available by the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research. The data for the CPS 1976 American National Election Study were originally collected under a grant from the National Science Foundation. Neither the original collectors of the data nor the Consortium bears any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here. Public Opinion Quarterly ? 1979 by The Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier North-Holland, Inc. 0033-362X/79/0043-359/$1.75 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.156 on Sat, 10 Sep 2016 05:44:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 360 MICHAEL W. TRAUGOTT AND JOHN P. KATOSH first national study to replicate that effort based upon the panel study of the American electorate conducted by the Center for Political Studies from 1972 to 1976. The presentation includes a discussion of the magnitude of the misreporting of registration status and voting behavior as well as the characteristics of those who are most likely to misreport their registration or voting. It also includes an evaluation of three competing explanations of an apparent interview effect on voting behavior. Estimating Registration and Voting from Surveys Clausen's report on the results of the 1964 vote validation study stands to date as the only major investigation of the validity of voting reports in surveys. Clausen began his analysis by examining the relationship between estimates of voting derived from the Survey Research Center's (SRC) 1964 Election Study and the Census Bureau's Voting Supplement to the November 1964 Current Population Survey (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1965). He attempted to explain the overreport of turnout by respondents in two surveys by differences between the samples and the electorate as a whole. This resulted in adjustments to both the numerator and denominator of the official turnout estimate to make them more comparable to the sampled populations in both of the surveys. He then compared that revised official estimate of voting with the turnout estimates from each of the surveys. Finally, he reported on the results of an official records check in an attempt to ascertain the sources and consequences of the remaining differences in turnout estimates. The data reported here are based upon equivalent surveys conducted in conjunction with the 1976 presidential election. We have attempted to replicate in our study the procedures Clausen used in 1964. The two survey sources are (1) the Center for Political Studies (CPS) 1976 National Election Study, which yielded an estimated turnout rate of 72 percent, and (2) the Census Bureau's Voting Supplement to the November 1976 Current Population Survey (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1978), which yielded an estimated turnout rate of 59 percent. Both of these turnout estimates exceed the official estimate of turnout of 54 percent, which was based upon actual election re-