Surveying and Observing Political Elites

Surveys and observation are two strategies of inquiry that gather rich amounts of data about political elites’ opinions, attitudes, and behavior. These research techniques have experienced advances benefitting from the development of the Internet and new technological tools. Survey research has evolved from country studies to comparative research with greater amounts of units and cases. However, such studies face important challenges regarding questionnaire design, sampling, interviewing, and data analysis. In particular, problems of representativity and lack of control may threaten comparative analysis. On their side, observation techniques raise the question of accessibility, of potential…