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	Political Sophistication Measurement	Ideological Constraint Analysis
Field	Political Psychology	Political Psychology
Family	Process / pipeline	Latent structure
Year of origin	1987	1964
Originator	Robert C. Luskin & John Zaller	Philip E. Converse
Type	Composite cognitive index	Belief-system structure analysis
Seminal source	Zaller, J. R. (1992). The nature and origins of mass opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9780521407861	Converse, P. E. (1964). The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In D. E. Apter (Ed.), Ideology and Discontent (pp. 206-261). New York: Free Press. ISBN: 9780029006702
Aliases	Political Awareness Index, Political Expertise Measure, Cognitive Sophistication Index	Belief System Constraint, Attitude Constraint Analysis, Issue Consistency Analysis
Related	4	4
Summary	Political sophistication measurement assesses the size, range, and organization of an individual's political belief system, the degree to which a person's political cognitions are numerous, wide-ranging, and well integrated. Luskin (1987) developed rigorous operationalizations, and Zaller (1992) showed that political awareness, his preferred sophistication indicator, governs how citizens receive and accept political messages.	Ideological constraint analysis measures the degree to which an individual's or a public's political attitudes hang together in a coherent, predictable structure, the extent to which knowing a person's position on one issue lets you predict their positions on others. Introduced by Converse (1964) as the defining feature of a belief system, it is assessed through inter-item correlations, factor/latent-dimension models, and constraint indices.