Whose scale is it anyway? Input talk by Will Lowe, October 20, 2021.
Exploratory text scaling methods are widely used and have natural multidimensional extensions, but their results require careful interpretation and may simply not reflect constructs of substantive interest. While confirmatory methods have also been suggested, e.g. Wordscores, these are under-theorized such that it is not entirely clear how and when they can be expected to work, or how they might extend to multiple dimensions. Since these questions are currently open, I will review some existing practical solutions to confirmatory scaling, suggests some methods not yet in widespread use, and consider how they might address an as-yet unappreciated and startling artifact of exploratory methods.
Will Lowe is Senior Research Scientist at the Hertie School. His research spans legislative politics, political economy, and public policy. Methodologically he is interested in statistical models of text and in causal inference.