Introducing a New External Efficacy Construct

• In Event: Contemporary Issues in Public Opinion Research Methods

Abstract

Political efficacy is a core construct in the field of political communication, measuring the citizenry's perceptions that they are both capable of participating (internal efficacy, IE) and that government and public officials will be responsive to them (external efficacy, EE) (Campbell et al., 1954; Lane, 1959; Balch, 1974). Whereas extensive research in the 1980s identified and validated the IE construct, EE has largely been ignored on a methodological level, resulting in an ad-hoc approach to survey measurement that creates reliability and validity problems. Many different EE survey items have been employed (Boulianne et al, 2023; Skurka et al., 2022); the two most common items–"No Say" and "No Care," which appear on the ANES and GSS–fail to adhere to best principles in survey design. In short, the status quo is sub-optimal.

In this paper, we present a new EE construct based on qualitative and quantitative research. We report the results of three focus groups conducted in 2023 that surface citizens' conceptions of government responsiveness, citizen impact, and what it means to feel heard or cared for by elected officials. These qualitative responses are used to develop new survey items, which are then initially evaluated via 18 individual cognitive pre-testing interviews conducted in 2023. These survey items were then quantitatively pre-tested using representative samples to ensure reliability and validity towards the concept. Our revised EE construct is robust to theoretical expectations and consistent across subgroups.

Authors

• Katherine Haenschen, Northeastern University

• Kevin Drakulich, Northeastern University

• Anna Zhang, Northeastern University