Conferences

Political satisfaction is one of the many concepts in social sciences that can be measured (and are often measured) by means of multiple indicators. The operationalisation and measurement of political satisfaction is not straightforward: satisfaction with democracy or satisfaction with government are often used to measure political satisfaction as a whole, while it has also been shown that economic performances affect the popular political support, as well as system performances (in terms of quality of education and health services) can influence system support and political satisfaction. However, at least for some of these concepts, the question arises if they should be considered as reflective indicators or formative indicators of the more general construct. After a brief discussion of the operationalisation of political satisfaction, based on the European Social Survey (ESS) data, a measurement model for political satisfaction is fitted, that allows the three sub-constructs “satisfaction with democracy”, “satisfaction with government” and “satisfaction with economy” to act both as formative and/or reflective indicators. The model is then tested for measurement invariance across the different countries in the ESS.