Recent Events and the Coding of Cross-National Indicators

Much research in political science relies on datasets produced by human coders. Many variables included in these datasets are not based on observable facts but rather require a considerable level of human judgment. This project studies the extent to which this judgment is affected by availability bias and how it influences the retrospective coding of historic cases. The analysis uses coder-level data from the V-Dem project, one of the few datasets collecting and releasing codings tagged with timestamps when they were produced. The results show that recent dramatic events in a country just prior to the coding have a small, but visible impact on coder ratings, but primarily for those variables that are directly related to the observed events. The magnitude of this effect, however, is small. This alleviates concerns that prominent events in world politics around the time of coding significantly affect the reliability of cross-national indicators.