Replication Data for: \"People Like Me\" - Introducing Group Political Efficacy

Political efficacy is a powerful predictor of political participation. Many traditional measures of efficacy in political science prompt survey respondents to think of “people like me”, thus evoking a group reference. However, without specifying which of multiple possible group memberships respondents ought to think of, answers may refer to completely different groups across respondents, resulting in imprecise measures. In this paper, we argue that political efficacy encompasses not only an internal and an external dimension, but also a third dimension, group efficacy, which reflects variation in degrees of system responsiveness different groups. To empirically assess our argument, we developed new measures of political efficacy and conducted two large, register-based surveys among adolescents and adults in Germany. The results show that individuals have very different perceptions of group efficacy depending on their educational, economic, and migration backgrounds. With over 60 percent, a clear majority of respondents differentiate between group and external efficacy, suggesting that distinguishing these dimensions theoretically and empirically is important. Based on our evidence, we suggest that a vague stimulus such as “people like me” blurs the differences between general and group-related dimensions of external political efficacy. We thus suggest that to adequately assess group efficacy, the concrete group of reference that the researcher is interested in should be specified, whereas no group reference should be made if the aim is to assess external efficacy.

政治效能感（political efficacy）是预测政治参与的强效指标。政治学领域诸多传统政治效能感测量工具，会引导受访者联想“与我相似之人”，由此唤起群体参照。但由于未明确指定受访者应参照的具体群体归属类型，不同受访者的作答所指向的群体可能完全不同，最终导致测量结果精度不足。本研究认为，政治效能感不仅包含内在维度与外在维度，还存在第三维度——群体效能感（group efficacy），其反映的是不同群体所感知到的制度回应程度差异。为实证验证本研究的理论主张，我们开发了全新的政治效能感测量工具，并针对德国青少年与成年群体开展了两项基于行政登记数据的大型调查。研究结果显示，受访者的群体效能感感知会因教育、经济与移民背景的不同而存在显著差异。超六成受访者能够明确区分群体效能感与外在效能感，这表明在理论与实证层面区分这两个维度具有重要意义。基于本次研究的实证证据，我们提出，诸如“与我相似之人”这类模糊的引导表述，会模糊外在政治效能感的通用维度与群体关联维度之间的边界。因此，我们建议：若要准确评估群体效能感，研究者需明确指定其关注的具体参照群体；而若目标为测量外在效能感，则不应设置群体参照引导。