Constructing the Questionnaire: The Challenges of Measuring Attitudes toward Democracy across Europe

This chapter describes and evaluates the rigorous procedures used to design, develop, pre-test, and translate the items on the European Social Survey democracy module. The chapter starts with an overview of the challenges of designing a module on a topic which does not form part of the daily discourse for many people in the general population. It then moves on to evaluate some of the key design decisions: measuring importance of democracy rather than alternatives; deciding between listwise and pairwise administration of the items; dealing with abstract concepts and interpretations of “democracy,” trying to ensure cultural equivalence and effective translation; ensuring variation in response to consensual items; dealing with social desirability and the use of forced choice questions (dichotomous “trade-offs”). The chapter concludes with a discussion of the challenges of designing questions on complex topics like democracy and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the final module fielded.