Introduction

This appendix presents supplementary information on the data collection process, on the operationalization of the variables and on the statistical methods used in this volume. This information is divided into five sections. In the first section, we explain how the data on the positions of parties during electoral campaigns were collected, and we present the criteria used to sample newspaper articles. The second section gives the detailed references of the individual-level datasets. The next two sections present the procedures used to operationalize individual-level variables, first in the case of social-structural variables (class, education, religion), then with respect to citizens' issue-positions. Part of the information on these operationalizations cannot be presented here for reasons of space. This concerns the tables indicating the recoding procedures for social-structural variables, as well as the detailed discussion of the measures of voters' attitudes. This information is, however, available from the website of the project (www.ipz.uzh.ch/npw/). In the fifth section of this appendix, finally, we turn to the statistical methods used in this volume and give more detailed information on multidimensional scaling and on the various indices and summary measures used in the comparative chapters.

Analysis of the supply side of electoral competition: data collection

All analyses of the supply side of electoral competition are based on an original dataset collected for this project on the content of mass media during electoral campaigns. We selected in each country a quality newspaper and a tabloid (or equivalent if there were no ‘true’ tabloids).