Studying an elite recruitment pool’s democratic potential requires stricter standards than ordinary opinion polls.

Evidence

The strictness of the standards that were applied in the research on students was nevertheless useful. In contrast to the usual opinion polls, this was an attempt to establish the extent of the stable democratic potential within a population which formed a significant field of recruitment for future élites. The interpretation of the research material was carried out in three stages: establishing the subject’s willingness to take part in politics at all (political disposition [Habitus]); establishing the subject’s attitude to the democratic system (political tendency); and establishing the presence and character of ideological motifs (view of society). The method used was that of `descriptive typology’, as it was termed in the remarks on research technique. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 580

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Frankfurt School debates over empirical vs. critical social research and survey methodology. The three-stage Habitus/tendency/view-of-society scheme is a reusable analytic template. — connects to: Open-ended survey questions distort ideological meaning among less educated respondents.; Deliberative polling reveals the public would hold different views if it thought harder — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 767
• DEFINE: Defines ‘descriptive typology’ as a technique: classifying answers to individual or grouped questions to build a typology of political types.
• SEED: Angle: ‘Why opinion polls can’t measure democracy — the three-stage survey design that tried.’
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Open-ended survey questions distort ideological meaning among less educated respondents.; Deliberative polling reveals the public would hold different views if it thought harder — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 767