Replication Data for: On The Meaning of Survey Reports of Roll Call ``Votes''

Contemporary efforts to evaluate representation often compare survey measures of how citizens say they would vote on legislation to what elected officials do in office. These comparisons generally suggest poor representation. We argue here that this common design is unlikely to effectively evaluate representation because responses to survey questions differ in important aspects from voting in legislatures. Measurement error and construct validity undermine the comparison. Three survey experiments show that providing partisan and non-partisan information readily available to legislators materially changes respondents' expressed preferences on roll call votes. With information, expressed policy positions are both less centrist and more closely matched to legislator behavior in their preferred party. Respondents also appear aware of their own lack of knowledge in evaluating roll call policy votes. The treatment effect of information decreases in confidence judging policy in that area. We show similar patterns for respondent opinions on Supreme Court decisions.当前学界评估代议质量的主流研究，通常将公民自述的立法投票意向与民选官员在任内的实际投票行为进行比对。这类比对通常得出代议效果不佳的研究结论。但本文认为，这一通用研究设计难以有效评估代议质量，因为问卷受访对象的回答与立法机构中的正式投票行为在多个关键维度上存在本质差异。测量误差与构念效度(Construct Validity)的固有局限，削弱了这类比对的学术可信度。三项问卷调查实验结果显示，向受访对象提供议员可便捷获取的党派性与非党派性信息，会显著改变其在唱名投票(Roll Call Votes)议题上的自述政策偏好。获取信息后，受访对象自述的政策立场既不再偏向中间路线，也更贴合其支持政党所倡导的议员行为模式。受访对象亦表现出对自身在评估唱名投票政策议题时存在知识缺口的认知。信息干预的处理效应，会随受访对象对该领域政策判断的自信程度提升而逐步减弱。针对美国最高法院判决的受访意见分析中，我们同样观察到了相似的规律。