Meaning: 6-item index measuring the extent to which people's understanding of democracy is enlightened in the sense that they define democracy ``correctly'' by its liberal core and at the same time explicitly reject non-liberal alternative notions.
Source: Index invented and documented in Welzel, Freedom Rising (2013: 79; 310-315), www.cambridge.org/welzel (Online Appendix, p. 100), based on data from the World Values Surveys, countries from rounds five and six.
Scaling: Multi-point index from minimum 0 when all three liberal notions of democracy are fully rejected and all three non-liberal notion fully accepted, to maximum 1.0, when the exact opposite is the case, with proper fractions for intermediate positions. Country scores are population averages (arithmetic mean) on the 0-1 index.
Remarks: Individual-level scores are normally distributed around the mean in each national sample.
Type of variable: Continuous
Last updated by source: 2014-03-01