Attitude extremity is measured by a questionnaire on three dimensions: economic, social, and environmental.
I notice that of the 8 economic questions, three are essentially the same question rephrased (labeled "eqwlth", "eqincome" and "goveqinc") and two additional questions are very closely related ("helpsick" and "helpoor"). It's not clear how these 8 questions do a very good job of measuring attitude extremity along the economic axis.
Questions along the other axis also seem too nuanced for a simple 1-5 answer (agree-strongly to disagree-strongly). For example are nuclear power stations "extremely dangerous" to the environment. Well, in my mind, of course they pose some danger, but less so than the coal plants they often replace. I'd have to disagree strongly that they are "extremely" dangerous (i.e. be classified as having an extreme attitude). I'm not trying to start an argument over the pros and cons of nuclear power here, but just wanted to point out that the questions selected by the researchers introduce their own bias where shallower answers seem more centrist.
Perhaps I'm too sensitive about these kinds of classifications. I consider myself a libertarian and usually feel poorly categorized by surveys.
Yeah, really. I have extremely left-wing opinions, to the point that most Americans would indeed consider me a left-wing extremist. However, these questions seem to me to fail to capture the interesting degrees of variation. For example, there's no option given for the right-wing position that poor people are not merely poor due to their own faults, but that in fact government policy should be used to appropriate what little they have and make them even poorer, or that foreigners should not merely be left outside the United States via restrictive immigration, but bombed into oblivion. Neither is there an option for saying that we should not merely use taxation to redistribute wealth to the poor, but actually seize the means of production and abolish wage-labor. The statement about Irish, Italian, and Jewish Americans fails to capture what really happened in the post-WW2 decades to integrate those minorities. The questions on science versus religion contain no options for fundamentalist religion or transhumanism (despite the fact that Evangelical Christians make up 20% of the total population!). The question about marriage doesn't ask whether husbands should be able to beat or rape disobedient wives. I can't even answer the question about driving a car, because I don't.
The interesting thing about studies of extremism lies in finding out exactly which views are considered the normative mainstream, and which views are considered "out-of-sight".
In US terms I'm a liberal, and I agree there's a lot to question in this study.
I'd certainly want to see a replication with more thorough methods and more informed question design before drawing any conclusions.
I'm not even sure it makes sense politically. In this model, who are the swing voters? If older people have entrenched views and younger people don't vote, how does this information correlate to election-winning voter swings in the gap between the two?
I notice that of the 8 economic questions, three are essentially the same question rephrased (labeled "eqwlth", "eqincome" and "goveqinc") and two additional questions are very closely related ("helpsick" and "helpoor"). It's not clear how these 8 questions do a very good job of measuring attitude extremity along the economic axis.
Questions along the other axis also seem too nuanced for a simple 1-5 answer (agree-strongly to disagree-strongly). For example are nuclear power stations "extremely dangerous" to the environment. Well, in my mind, of course they pose some danger, but less so than the coal plants they often replace. I'd have to disagree strongly that they are "extremely" dangerous (i.e. be classified as having an extreme attitude). I'm not trying to start an argument over the pros and cons of nuclear power here, but just wanted to point out that the questions selected by the researchers introduce their own bias where shallower answers seem more centrist.
Perhaps I'm too sensitive about these kinds of classifications. I consider myself a libertarian and usually feel poorly categorized by surveys.