Selection Bias in Comparative Research: The Case of Incomplete Data Sets
- 1 January 2003
- journal article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Political Analysis
- Vol. 11 (3), 255-274
- https://doi.org/10.1093/pan/mpg014
Abstract
Selection bias is an important but often neglected problem in comparative research. While comparative case studies pay some attention to this problem, this is less the case in broader cross-national studies, where this problem may appear through the way the data used are generated. The article discusses three examples: studies of the success of newly formed political parties, research on protest events, and recent work on ethnic conflict. In all cases the data at hand are likely to be afflicted by selection bias. Failing to take into consideration this problem leads to serious biases in the estimation of simple relationships. Empirical examples illustrate a possible solution (a variation of a Tobit model) to the problems in these cases. The article also discusses results of Monte Carlo simulations, illustrating under what conditions the proposed estimation procedures lead to improved results.Keywords
This publication has 28 references indexed in Scilit:
- Altering Party SystemsPublished by University of Michigan Library ,2001
- Democracy and DevelopmentPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,2000
- Analyzing Censored and Sample-Selected Data with Tobit and Heckit ModelsPolitical Analysis, 1999
- Validity and Systematicity of Newspaper Data in Event AnalysisEuropean Sociological Review, 1999
- Evidence and Inference in the Comparative Case StudyComparative Politics, 1998
- Ethnopolitical Rebellion: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of the 1980s with Risk Assessments for the 1990sAmerican Journal of Political Science, 1997
- Tools for Intuition about Sample Selection Bias and Its CorrectionAmerican Sociological Review, 1997
- Making Votes CountPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1997
- Grüne Parteien in WesteuropaPublished by Springer Science and Business Media LLC ,1993
- THRESHOLDS AND PAYOFFS IN LIST SYSTEMS OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION *European Journal of Political Research, 1977