Comment: The Dimensionality of Public Attitudes toward Government Spending

Abstract

In “The Two Faces of Government Spending,” Paul Goren applies a confirmatory factor model to data from the Center for Political Studies (CPS) National Election Studies (NES) to show that public attitudes toward policy spending are two dimensional. Here, I show that a unidimensional model, derived from nonparametric item response theory, can be used to represent the same data. This latter model provides additional insights about specific spending responses and also produces results that are equivalent to the two-dimensional model with respect to the impact of racial stereotypes. Therefore, by scientific standards, the unidimensional representation of public opinion toward government spending seems to be preferable.