Our Methods
Learn about our process!
Thorough research and careful consideration.
We had a great idea for a better way to assess political orientation, and we wanted to make it happen. That’s why we spent countless hours researching political ideologies, defining concepts, designing a survey, and collaborating with programmers to create a tool for housing it all.
We started by researching a wide array of ideologies to utilize in our quest to measure political ideologies. After much research and debate, we landed on the political ideologies below, the ideologies we believed best exemplified the dichotomies of our three areas of focus: international relations (red), economics (green), and social matters (blue). A lot of ideologies and even different areas of focus were considered, but we ultimately decided these were what would indicate an individual’s overall political belief the best. See how we defined these ideologies below:
Globalism
Advocates of globalism argue for internationally focused economic and foreign policy that aims for strong cooperative relationships between countries. Such policy is focused on involvement in international organizations and agreements and involvement in foreign affairs.
Isolationism
Advocates of isolationism argue for non-involvement in international affairs and emphasize the state’s sovereignty and the state’s ability to act independently and unilaterally. Isolationists are generally against involvement in international organizations and agreements and prioritize the state’s own well-being over others.
Communism
Advocates of communism argue for a system in which private property is replaced by state ownership and the means of production are under communal ownership. Supporters usually advocate for policy that aims at creating an equal economic outcome for all citizens through actions such as heavier taxation of the rich, increased welfare, and heavy business regulation.
Laissez-Faire Capitalism
Advocates of Laissez Faire argue against government intervention in the economy and business affairs – such as setting minimum wages, duties, trade restrictions, regulation, and corporate taxes. It also argues that the “Hands-Off” approach by the government in business is the best way to create economic prosperity.
Communitarianism
Advocates of communitarianism argue that a person’s identity is molded by the community that they are placed into, with an inherent rejection of extreme individualism. Communitarianism emphasizes the needs of the community above all else and argues for government policy that advances the communities interests.
Libertarianism
Advocates of libertarianism argue for strong rights of the individual to life, liberty and property, and the government’s involvement is limited to the defense of those rights. Libertarianism also strongly rejects the government compromising the rights of some individuals on behalf of other individuals in the society.
Designing the Survey
Once we had defined these ideologies, we used them to guide the questions we began preparing for the survey. Over a period of a month, we wrote over 200 questions in our quest to create a great survey – even though we would only use 153 in the end. We drafted questions, revised them, tossed some out, rewrote others, and then revised them all again until we believed we had a great list of questions. And then we tested them out with a group of around 35 people in an attempt to catch anything we may have missed. After pre-testing our questions, we revised them once more, addressing concerns that were raised during the pre-test, before settling on the list we currently have in our survey.