Replication Data for: Maps in People’s Heads: Assessing A New Measure of Context

To understand the relationship between place and politics, we must measure both political attitudes and the ways in which place is represented in the minds of individuals. In this paper, we assess a new measure of mental-representation of geography, in which survey respondents draw their own local communities on maps and describe them. This mapping measure has been used in Canada, the UK, Denmark, and the U.S. so far. We use a panel study in Canada to present evidence that these maps are both valid and reliable measures of a personally relevant geographic area, laying the measurement groundwork for the growing number of studies using this technology. We hope to set efforts to measure ‘place’ for the study of context and politics on firmer footing. Our validity assessments show that individuals are thinking about people and places with which they have regular contact when asked to draw their communities. Our reliability assessments show that people can draw more or less the same map twice, even when the exercise is repeated months later. Finally, we provide evidence that the concept of community is a tangible consideration in the minds of ordinary citizens and is not simply a normative aspiration or motivation.

若要探究地域与政治的内在关联，需同时测量政治态度，以及个体心智中地域的表征方式。本研究针对一种全新的地理心智表征（mental representation）测量方法展开评估：该方法要求调查受访者在地图上手绘自身所属的本地社区，并辅以文字描述。截至目前，该绘图测量法（mapping measure）已在加拿大、英国、丹麦及美国得到应用。我们依托加拿大的一项追踪研究，证实此类手绘地图作为与个体密切相关的地理区域的测量工具，同时具备效度与信度，为日益增多的采用该技术的相关研究奠定了测量学基础。本研究期望为依托“地域”开展情境与政治研究的测量工作筑牢坚实根基。效度评估结果显示，当要求受访者绘制所属社区时，其脑海中浮现的均为日常往来接触的人群与地域。信度评估结果表明，即便时隔数月重复该绘图任务，受访者两次绘制的地图也大体一致。最后，本研究提供实证证据表明，社区概念在普通民众的认知中是切实存在的考量因素，而非仅仅是一种规范性的愿景或行为动机。