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A Reply to Whiteley

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Stan Taylor
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Extract

In a disingenuous piece of aggregate data analysis Paul Whiteley suggests that, because he found that the correlation between two variables in a local election held at one point of time in one city was spurious when a third was controlled for, this implies that the relationships between two variables, one calculated on a different basis, in two general elections which took place three years earlier and covered a wide area of England, will also be spurious when an additional variable is introduced into the analysis. It is an inelegant analysis in model building and testing, in so far as it cannot explain the findings it purports to explain. Unfortunately it is also a textbook case of making causal inferences from variables associated with each other for reasons that lie outside the scope of the model.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , April 1980 , pp. 268 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 Whiteley, Paul, ‘The Decline of Partisan Allegiance in Britain and the National Front Vote’, paper given to the Third Contemporary British Politics Workshop, University of Sheffield, 01 1978.Google Scholar

2 Whiteley, Paul, ‘The National Front Vote in the 1977 GLC Elections: An Aggregate Data Analysis‘, British Journal of Political Science, IX (1979), 370–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Taylor, Stan, ‘The National Front: Anatomy of a Political Movement’, in Miles, R. and Phizacklea, A., eds., Racism and Political Action in Britain (London: Routledge, 1979), p. 139.Google Scholar

4 See e.g. Daniel, W., Racial Discrimination in England (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin, 1968)Google Scholar; Smith, D., Racial Disadvantage (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin, 1977)Google Scholar; Rex, J. and Tomlinson, S., Colonial Immigrants in a British City (London: Routledge, 1979).Google Scholar

5 Steed, M., ‘The National Front Vote’, Parliamentary Affairs, XXXI (1978), 282–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar