Replication Data for: How to survey about electoral turnout? The efficacy of the face-saving response items in 19 different contexts

Researchers studying electoral participation often rely on post-election surveys. However, the reported turnout rate is usually much higher in survey samples than in reality. Survey methodology research has shown that offering abstainers the opportunity to use face-saving response options succeeds at reducing overreporting by a range of 4 to 8 percentage points. This finding rests on survey experiments conducted in the United States after national elections. We offer a test of the efficacy of the face-saving response items through a series of wording experiments embedded in 19 post-election surveys in Europe and Canada, at four different levels of government. With greater variation in contexts, our analyses reveal a distribution of effect sizes ranging from null to minus 18 percentage points.

研究选举参与的学者通常依赖选举后调查（post-election surveys）。然而，调查样本中报告的投票率往往远高于实际水平。调查方法学研究表明，为弃权者提供保全面子的应答选项，可将过度报告的情况减少4至8个百分点。这一发现基于美国全国选举后开展的调查实验。我们通过嵌入在欧洲与加拿大四个不同政府层级选举中开展的19场选举后调查内的一系列措辞实验，检验了保全面子应答项的有效性。相较于仅依托美国情境的既有研究，本研究的情境覆盖更为多元，分析结果显示效应量（effect size）的分布范围从无效应到负18个百分点。