Papers by Bregje Holleman
Clinical & Experimental Allergy
Clinical & Experimental Allergy
Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing
Issue framing as equivalence framing: The effect of conservative and progressive introduction tex... more Issue framing as equivalence framing: The effect of conservative and progressive introduction texts on political attitudes reported in Voting Advice ApplicationsThe framing of a message can affect the way people think about an issue, and the framing of attitude questions influences the opinions expressed. Current research investigated political emphasis framing in the context of Voting Advice Applications. In an online survey regarding the European Elections (2019), a conservative vs. progressive frame was manipulated across 15 questions. As the original VAA did not include introductory texts to the questions, a control condition without introduction texts was also added. Participants (N = 106) were randomly assigned to one of these three conditions. Results show that there is an effect for conservative introductions to elicit answers reflecting more progressive attitudes, but only for the group of respondents with conservative voting positions (PTV). This pattern could not be expla...
Survey Practice
Founded in 1947, the American Association for Public Opinion Research is the leading association ... more Founded in 1947, the American Association for Public Opinion Research is the leading association of public opinion and survey research professionals. The AAPOR community includes producers and users of survey data from a variety of disciplines. Our members span a range of interests including election polling, market research, statistics, research methodology, health related data collection and education. Membership in AAPOR is all about opportunity-the opportunity to learn from a diverse group of leaders in the survey and public opinion research field, the opportunity to network and exchange knowledge and the opportunity to improve how survey research is conducted and disseminated.
Acta Politica
Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) fulfill different needs for different citizens. In national ele... more Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) fulfill different needs for different citizens. In national elections, the majority of users can be characterized as politically sophisticated citizens who use VAAs for entertainment purposes and confirmation of their party preference, but a significant minority uses VAAs to learn about politics and make an informed vote choice. VAAs might, however, play a different role in second-order elections, since in these elections campaign dynamics and information supply are very different. In the current research, we applied latent class analysis on user data from a widely used Dutch VAA (Kieskompas) for a supranational and several subnational elections in the Netherlands, to test if an extant typology of VAA users for national elections could be replicated. We find that the typology can be replicated for most of these elections, but also that the relative size of the
PLOS ONE
Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) provide voting recommendations to millions of people. As these ... more Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) provide voting recommendations to millions of people. As these voting recommendations are based on users' answers to attitude questions, the framing of these questions can have far-reaching consequences. The current study reports on a field experiment in which the framing of the header above VAA statements (N = 17) was manipulated (condition 1: no header; condition 2: a right-wing header, e.g., finance; condition 3: a left-wing header, e.g., nature and environment). Visitors of a VAA developed for Utrecht, the fourth largest municipality in the Netherlands, were randomly guided to one of the versions of the tool in which the header type was varied. Results (based on N respondents = 27,404) show that providing a header (left-wing or right-wing) leads to more left-wing answers as compared a condition where there is no header above the attitude statement. This effect, however, is only observed for respondents with lower levels of political sophistication.
Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing, 2016
Irish Political Studies, 2015
In many countries with multiparty systems, a decline in class voting has increased volatility and... more In many countries with multiparty systems, a decline in class voting has increased volatility and the need for comprehensive information about the political landscape among voters. Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are online tools that match users to political parties and, as such, they hold a promise of reinforcing informational transparency and democratic representation. The current research investigated whether VAAs live up to this expectation by investigating to what extent VAAs affected users' political knowledge and vote choice in the Dutch national elections of 2012. Results show that VAA users feel that the VAA improved their political knowledge. In addition, those groups of VAA users who experienced a large knowledge increase, also relatively often indicated that their vote choice had been affected. This suggests that VAAs contribute to informational transparency by increasing knowledge among a potentially wide audience, and also that VAAs might increase democratic representation to the extent that VAAs persuade people to vote for the candidate that best represents their opinions. On the other hand, we found discrepancies between behavioural and perceptual measurements of the effect of VAAs on vote choice. This raises doubts about whether VAAs shape actual voting behaviours and knowledge, or rather perceptions of that.
American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) conference: polls for the public good
Tijdschrift voor taalbeheersing, 2013
In September 2012, the NWO-project Voting Advice Via Internet has started. In this research proje... more In September 2012, the NWO-project Voting Advice Via Internet has started. In this research project, we investigate, among other things, how various wording aspects of voting advice applications (VAAs) influence the answers given to the VAA statements. The current article investigates the effects of two wording aspects: valence framing ("Wearing niqabs in public should be forbidden" vs. "Wearing niqabs in public should be allowed") and issue framing (is a statement on niqabs placed under the heading of "immigration" or "integration"?). Results show that respondents more often give disagreeing answers to negatively worded questions, than agreeing answers to equivalent positive questions. This effect occurs for about one in every three questions. The effect of issue framing occurs for only one in eight questions. When an effect of issue framing occurs, we find respondents answering in correspondence with the frame chosen: when the financial aspects of an issue are foregrounded ("finance"), respondents answer more "rightist" as compared to when social aspects are made salient ("care").
For decades, survey researchers have known that respondents give different answers to attitude qu... more For decades, survey researchers have known that respondents give different answers to attitude questions worded positively ("X is good. Agree-Disagree"), negatively ("X is bad. Agree-Disagree") or on a bipolar scale ("X is bad-good"). This makes survey answers hard to interpret, especially since findings on exactly how the answers are affected are conflicting. In the current paper, we present twelve studies in which the effect of question polarity was measured for a set of thirteen contrastive adjectives. In these studies, the same adjectives were used so the generalizability of wording effects across studies could be examined for each word pair. Results show that for five of the word pairs an effect of question wording can be generalized. The direction of these effects are largely consistent: respondents give the same answers to positive and bipolar questions, but they are more likely to disagree with negative questions than to agree with positive questions or to choose the positive side of the bipolar scale. In other words, respondents express their opinions more positively when the question is worded negatively.
Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 2014
The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with p... more The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
Sociological Methods & Research, 1999
Journal of Pragmatics, 2011
Respondents are more likely to disagree with negative survey questions (This text is boring. Yes/... more Respondents are more likely to disagree with negative survey questions (This text is boring. Yes/No) than to agree with positive ones (This text is interesting. Yes/No). The size of this effect, however, varies largely between word pairs. A semantic classification of adjectives in closed scale/absolute and open scale/relative types was predicted to explain this variation. To classify survey adjectives, a judgment experiment was conducted. Language users (N = 173) rated sentences in which an adjective was modified by the maximizer completely or the approximator almost: it should be possible to combine closed scale/ absolute adjectives with these modifiers, in contrast to open scale/relative adjectives for which this is not the case. Results show that language users agree on which adjective and degree modifier combinations are acceptable and which combinations are unacceptable. Moreover, the two methods, almost and fully, show convergent validity. However, the rating of the same combination of a specific adjective and a specific degree modifier varies across contexts. This suggests that neither of the two methods allows for an unambiguous classification of adjectives. Hence, the distinction between closed scale/absolute and open scale/relative adjectives cannot explain variation in survey response effects. For semantics and pragmatics results indicate that context plays a crucial role in the linguistic behavior of adjectives and degree modifiers.
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Papers by Bregje Holleman