Panels and Cohorts: Design and Model in the Study of Voting Turnout

The intention here, in part, is to improve upon an earlier attempt to formulate the issues raised by substituting a panel design for the conventional analysis of a series of independent cross-section samples.

Abstract

In submitting this preliminary and tentative analysis of age patterns of participation of the white population in recent presidential elections, we hope to make three kinds of methodological contributions. First, we call attention to the unique design features of a substantial body of archival data that seems to have been insufficiently analyzed, and we begin the exploration of the error structure of these data. Second, we consider how the statistical model for cohort analysis suggested in recent literature (e.g., Mason et al. 1973; Pullum 1980) needs to be modified to take account of the pseudo-panel design of census surveys of voting and illustrate some kinds of inference that may be appropriate for the modified model. The intention here, in part, is to improve upon an earlier attempt (Duncan 1981) to formulate the issues raised by substituting a panel design for the conventional analysis of a series of independent cross-section samples. Third, we raise the question of whether an explicit and consistent theoretical basis for the statistical model can be developed using ideas drawn from recent work on latent-trait models (e.g., Duncan 1985, 1986). Corresponding to