Measuring Bias and Uncertainty in DW-NOMINATE Ideal Point Estimates via the Parametric Bootstrap

Posted: 18 Aug 2009

See all articles by Royce Carroll

Royce Carroll

University of Essex - Department of Government

Jeffrey B. Lewis

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Keith T. Poole

University of Georgia - School of Public and International Affairs

Howard Rosenthal

New York University

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: Summer 2009

Abstract

DW-NOMINATE scores for the U.S. Congress are widely used measures of legislators' ideological locations over time. These scores have been used in a large number of studies in political science and closely related fields. In this paper, we extend the work of Lewis and Poole (2004) on the parametric bootstrap to DW-NOMINATE and obtain standard errors for the legislator ideal points. These standard errors are in the range of 1%-4% of the range of DW-NOMINATE coordinates.

Suggested Citation

Carroll, Royce and Lewis, Jeffrey B. and Poole, Keith T. and Rosenthal, Howard, Measuring Bias and Uncertainty in DW-NOMINATE Ideal Point Estimates via the Parametric Bootstrap (Summer 2009). Political Analysis, Vol. 17, Issue 3, pp. 261-275, 2009, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1448455 or http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pan/mpp005

Royce Carroll (Contact Author)

University of Essex - Department of Government ( email )

Wivenhoe Park
Colchester CO4 3SQ, CO4 3SQ
United Kingdom

Jeffrey B. Lewis

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Keith T. Poole

University of Georgia - School of Public and International Affairs ( email )

Baldwin Hall
Athens, GA 30602-6254
United States

Howard Rosenthal

New York University ( email )

19 W 4th St
New York, NY New York 10012
United States
4155199591 (Phone)
4155199591 (Fax)

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