Links en rechts. Een empirisch perspectief nader onderzocht

Samenvatting

A critique of R. A. Roe's Links en rechts in een empirisch perspectief. Een onderzoek naar de dimensionaliteit van politieke attituden onder studenten ([Right and Left in an Empirical Perspective. An Investigation into the Dimensionality of Political Attitudes among Students], Amsterdam: Swets en Zeitlinger, 1975). Roe attempts to define the so-called Left-Right dichotomy by means of such ideologies as liberalism, conservatism, & fascism on the Right, & socialism & democracy on the Left. Using cluster analysis on data obtained from 350 psychology students at the U of Amsterdam, Roe attempts to distinguish various ideological attitudes. Objections to Roe's study include: (1) his unfounded definitions & operationalism of the investigated domain; & (2) his faulty analytical techniques, in that the ideological attitudes are not analyzed both separately & in terms of the whole group, & 'subjective' rotation procedures are applied that can neither be repeated nor controlled. This has led to a new investigation using principal components analysis & 'varimaxrotation', leading to a broader insight into the structure of Left-Right attitudes. In Op de Verkeerde weg: een reactie (On the Wrong Track: A Reaction), R. A. Roe argues the tenability & fruitfulness of his research, & considers the offered criticism to be unfounded, since it proceeds from a different research objective -- that of testing a doctrinaire hypothesis against political attitudes. 2 Tables. J. Migdal.