Meaning: 3-item index measuring the extent to which people's understanding of democracy is liberal in the sense that they define democracy ``correctly'' by its liberal, including free elections, civil liberties and equal rights.
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, 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