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Panel Effects in the American National Election Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Larry M. Bartels
Larry M. Bartels*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

Parallel panel and fresh cross-section samples in recent National Election Study surveys provide valuable leverage for assessing the magnitude of biases in statistical analyses of survey data due to panel attrition and panel conditioning. My analyses employing a variety of typical regression models suggest that substantial panel biases are likely to be fairly rare in these data, even when panel and cross-section respondents have markedly different characteristics. However, two of the dependent variables considered here—campaign interest and turnout—do appear to be sufficiently sensitive to panel effects to warrant significant discounting or adjustment of panel data. I propose adjustments for panel effects in both cross-sectional and dynamic analyses, based upon variants of the “fractional pooling” (Bartels 1996) and “two-stage auxiliary instrumental variables” (Franklin 1990) methods.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , 1999 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Society for Political Methodology 

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