Research
Research
In its research and teaching, the Department of Government primarily focuses on comparative and Austrian politics. Its research is concerned with political behaviour, political actors, such as political parties and politicians, political institutions, the processes governed by these institutions, as well as their outcomes. It includes work on political participation, voting behaviour, parties and party competition, coalition politics and Austrian politics in general and is mostly based on rationalist and behavioural approaches.
Our goal is to conduct high-level, internationally competitive research in the area of Comparative Politics with the collaboration of international project partners and research networks. At the Faculty of Social Sciences the department is mainly engaged in the key research area ''Political Competition and Communication: Democratic Representation in Changing Societies'.
The department’s approach places it in the discipline’s empirical-analytical core and is mostly based on quantitative social science methods. To map empirical phenomena accurately, researcher in the department focus on the continuous development of survey design, as well as on the analysis of empirical data by applying the best suited statistical model. The department aims to achieve the best work on Austrian politics and to make important contributions to the international academic literature on Comparative Government and Politics.
An overview of current publications and activities at the department can be found below and on the personal websites of our team.
Publications
Controlling acquiescence bias in measurement invariance tests
- Author(s)
- Julian Aichholzer
- Abstract
Assessing measurement invariance (MI) is an important cornerstone in establishing equivalence of instruments and comparability of constructs. However, a common concern is that respondent differences in acquiescence response style (ARS) behavior could entail a lack of MI for the measured constructs. This study investigates if and how ARS impacts MI and the level of MI achieved. Data from two representative samples and two popular short Big Five personality scales were analyzed to study hypothesized ARS differences among educational groups. Multiple-group factor analysis and the random intercept method for controlling ARS are used to investigate MI with and without controlling for ARS. Results suggest that, contrary to expectations, controlling for ARS had little impact on conclusions regarding the level of MI of the instruments. Thus, the results suggest that testing MI is not an appropriate means for detecting ARS differences per se. Implications and further research areas are discussed.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Journal
- Psihologija
- Volume
- 48
- Pages
- 409-429
- No. of pages
- 21
- ISSN
- 0048-5705
- Publication date
- 2015
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 501018 Psychological diagnostics, 501004 Differential psychology
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Psychology
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/e514ea93-c463-4cf3-a282-400a75627e91