EXAMPLE 6.2 Political Conservatism and Liberalism
Some political commentators have remarked that citizens of the United States are increasingly conservative, so much so that many treat liberal as a dirty word. We can study political ideology by analyzing response to certain items on the GSS. For instance, that survey asks (with the POLVIEWS item) where you would place yourself on a seven-point scale of political views ranging from extremely liberal, point 1, to extremely conservative, point 7. Table 6.2 shows the scale and the distribution of responses among the levels for the 2006 survey. Results are shown separately according to the three categories for the variable labelled as RACE in the GSS.
TABLE 6.2: Responses of Subjects on a Scale of Political Ideology
Race
Response
Black
White
Other
1. Extremely liberal
10
36
1
2. Liberal
21
109
13
3. Slightly liberal
22
124
13
4. Moderate, middle of road
74
421
27
5. Slightly conservative
21
179
9
6. Conservative
27
176
7
7. Extremely conservative
11
28
2
n = 186
n = 1073
n = 72