New memisc release 0.99.20.1 improves compatibility with RStudio and “tidyverse”

22 November 2019

Release 0.99.20.1. has been published on CRAN. It improves the way the package interoperates with RStudio and “tidyverse”. In particular:

A function view() provides a generic interface to the GUI function View() in base R and RStudio. It makes it possible to extend it to data objects of the classes “data.set”, “codeplan”, “descriptions”, and “importer”.

A method for “data.set” objects allows to transfer these objects more easiliy into the “tidyverse”, i.e. facilitates the use of functions from these package ecosystem on data sets imported or created with memisc. An as_haven() function translates “data.set” objects into “tibbles” with that extra information that the “haven” package adds to “tibbles” imported with the help of that package. This should allow to view and post-process data imported with memisc more or less the same way as if the data were imported with “haven”.

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New memisc release 0.99.17.1 facilitates checking your data

23 March 2019

A new release 0.99.17.1 of my package memisc has been published on CRAN. The new release has the following improvements:

mtable() results now include a legend for significance symbols.

A codeplan() function creates a data frame that describes the structure of an "importer" or "data.set" object. Such “codeplans” can be used to copy the “item structure” or code plan from one object to another.

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Measuring Democracy: How indices are affected by their institutional origins

30 March 2018

An article entitled “Method Factors in Democracy Indicators” just has appeared in Politics and Governance. It analyses the degree to which democracy indicators are influenced by the orginisation that created them. It shows that the origin of indicators in particular affects the detection of change in regimes.

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How ideologies and ideological thinking shape electoral behaviour

12 December 2017

A handbook chapter on “Ideology and Electoral Choice” has appeared in The Routledge Handbook of Elections, Voting Behavior and Public Opinion.

It discusses various conceptions of ideology – from the history of ideas to (social) psychology and the empirical evidence about the influence of ideological orientations on voting behaviour.

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How religiosity and religious denomination affects electoral behaviour

07 March 2017

The Sage Handbook of Electoral Behaviour, contains a contribution of the role of relgion in shaping electoral behaviour, authored by Sigrid Roßteutscher and me is now available from Sage Publications.

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Social structure and the decline in electoral turnout in Germany 1994–2013

14 January 2017

German Politics published an article with the title “Social Cleavages and Electoral Behaviour in Long-Term Perspective: Alignment without Mobilisation?” as part of a special issue of the German Bundestag election of 2013.

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