POLS 6386 MEASUREMENT THEORY
Seventh Assignment
Due 28 March 2001

1. The aim of this problem is to continue our study of the effect of being chosen as a Vice Presidential running mate has on a Senator's roll call voting record. We are going to begin looking at Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut who was selected by then Vice President Albert Gore to be his running mate in 2000. Download the following roll call data sets:
   
   105^th Senate Roll Call Matrix
   
   106^th Senate Roll Call Matrix
   
   Combined 105^th and 106^th Senate Roll Call Matrix
   
   The combined data matrix has one record for each unique Senator who served in either or both the 105^th and 106^th Senates. In effect, we are treating the two Senates as if they were one Congress. If a member served in both Senates then his record contains both the 612 roll calls for the 105^th plus the 672 roll calls for the 106^th for a total of 1284 roll calls. If a member served in the 105^th but not the 106^th, then his record has the 612 votes for the 105^th followed by 672 zeroes (in other words, it is as if he did not vote in the 2^nd half of the "Congress"). If a member served in the 106^th but not the 105^th, then his record has 612 zeroes for the 105^th followed by the 672 votes in the 106^th (in other words, it is as if he did not vote in the 1^st half of the "Congress"). Note that Lieberman appears twice in the 106^th. Once for the first session -- 1999 -- and once for the second session -- 2000 -- when the presidential election campaign began in earnest.
   
   When we use the combined matrix we are assuming that Senators do not change their ideal points between Senates!
   
   We are going to start by running these three roll call matrices through PERFL_2006. I have done some technical fixes to the program so download the new version below.
   
   Large Version Maximum Classification Program -- Can be compiled with gfortran. (The R Package can be accessed from this page.)
   
   The control card file for a one dimensional scaling should look like this:

   
   SEN0506.ORD
   NON-PARAMETRIC MULTIDIMENSIONAL UNFOLDING
       1 1284   10   19    1    4   20 0.025    3
   (3X,9A1,7X,4A1,2X,6A1,5X,3600I1)
   (I5,1X,19A1,2I5,50F8.3)

   1. Run PERFL_2006 in one, two, and three dimensions on all three roll call matrices. Report the one, two, and three dimensional correct classification percentages and use Excel to make a graph of the eigenvalues of the double-centered squared distance matrix computed from the agreement scores from the combined matrix.
      
      
   2. Use SPSS to make a graph of the two dimensional results of all three scalings. In the combined scaling, note that Lieberman has two points! -- one constraining him to be at the same point for the 105^th and calendar 1999 (1^st session of the 106^th, and one for calendar 2000 (2^nd session of the 106^th). Highlight Lieberman's ideal points on all of your plots.
      
      
   3. Put the coordinate output files into Excel and compute the correlations between the corresponding two and three dimensional solutions for all three matrices. Note that this will require some ingenuity on your part because not all the Senators served in both Senates and note that the rows in the combined file are slightly different from the rows in the 105^th and 106^th files. Report the correlations one dimension at a time for each dimensionality using the format below:

      
      
            One Dimension Scalings
                PERF 1d    KYST 1d         WNOM 1d
      ------------------------------------------------
      PERF 1d  1		
      KYST 1d	-0.92682	1	
      WNOM 1d	-0.95408	0.990908	1
      
      
            Two Dimensional Scalings
       	1 PERF 2d	1 KYST 2d	1 WNOM 2d
      -------------------------------------------------
      1 PERF 2d	1		
      1 KYST 2d	0.99034	1	
      1 WNOM 2d	1	0.99034 	1
      
       	2 PERF 2d	2 KYST 2d	2 WNOM 2d
      -------------------------------------------------
      2 PERF 2d	1		
      2 KYST 2d	0.592688	1	
      2 WNOM 2d	1	0.592688	1
      
                   etc.
      

      
      
      
2. Use HOUSYM3 to get an agreement score matrix for the 105^th, 106^th, and combined 105^th and 106^th Senates. Run the three agreement score matrices through KYST. Report the one, two, and three dimensional STRESS values for each matrix and use Excel to compute the correlations between the two and three dimensional coordinates from KYST with those from PERFL_2006. Report the correlations one dimension at a time for each dimensionality using the format above.
   
   
3. To continue our Lieberman project, you need to download all the Senate roll call votes taken to date from:
   
   U.S. Congress Web Site (Thomas)
   
   As of 20 March 2001 there were 37 votes cast in the Senate. Using your browser, save the roll call vote web pages as text files! Using Epsilon insert the following text at the very top of each web page:
   
   ****ROLL CALL NUMBER****
   
   followed by the vote number twice so it looks like this:

   
   ****ROLL CALL NUMBER****  12  12 Vote Number 12
   
   
   
   
   
         U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes
         107th Congress - 1st Session (2001)
         as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk 
         under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate

   This is the 12^th roll call vote. Note that the blank lines will be present when you save the web page as a text file (don't worry about the blank lines).
   
   Stack all the roll call votes on top of each other in order using the copy command. For example:
   
   copy s1.txt+s2.txt+s3.txt+s4.txt+s5.txt+s6.txt+s7.txt+s8.txt+s9.txt+s10.txt NO1.TXT
   
   stacks votes 1 to 10 on top of one another and places them in the file NO1.TXT. After you stack all the votes on top of one another name the file SBIG107.PRN and place it the directory:
   
   \RCHTMS107\
   
   Download the program below and place it in your \RCHTMS107\ directory:
   
   S107n.vbp -- Visual Basic 5.0 Program to Analyze Text Files of Web Pages (Part 1)
   S107n.vb2 -- Visual Basic 5.0 Program to Analyze Text Files of Web Pages (Part 2)
   S107nform.frm -- Visual Basic 5.0 Program to Analyze Text Files of Web Pages (Part 3)
   
   Compile using Visual Basic and create S107N.EXE.
   Run S107N.EXE by simply typing
   
   S107N
   
   A button will pop-up (don't be offended by the button -- the comment is aimed at me when I was debugging it!!). Hit the button and the program will analyze the text files of the web pages and turn them into roll call votes. When it is finished running, it will create a file called SEN107.VOT in your \RCHTMS107\ directory. The first few lines look like this:

   
        1    1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
        2    1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
        3    1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
        4    1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
        5    1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
        6    1111111161111661116111116161161111111166666666111111111111661166611911111611161111111111161111161111
        7    1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111911111111111111111111111111111111
                                   etc. etc. 

   The rows are the roll call votes. The program creates a transposed version of the roll call matrix.
   
   
   1. Print your version of SEN107.VOT and turn it in as part of your homework answer.
      
      
   2. The next step is to create the roll call dataset itself. Download the program and the dataset below and place them in \RCHTMS107\:
      
      TRANSPA.FOR FORTRAN program to Transpose SEN107.VOT. Can easily be compiled with gfortran.
      
      Header File for 107^th Senate
      
      Compile TRANSPA.FOR and then run TRANSPA.EXE by simply typing
      
      TRANSPA
      
      It creates several files the most important of which is the roll call voting matrix -- SEN107Y.ORD. The first few lines look like this:

      
      1074970041 0ALABAMA 20000SESSIONS   1111111111111116111116111111111666616
      1079465941 0ALABAMA 20000SHELBY     1111111111111116111116111111111666116
      1071490781 0ALASKA  20000MURKOWSKI  1111111111111116111616111111111666116
      1071210981 0ALASKA  20000STEVENS    1111111111111116111116111111111166916
      1071542961 0ARIZONA 20000KYL        1111111111111116111116111611111666616

      Print SEN107Y.ORD out and turn it in.