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1970, Hunter 1991, Mayer 1993, Kohut 2000, Layman 2001) As the concerns of this
domain made their way into practical politics, they tended to come by way of ‘hot-button
issues’, issues emphasizing the intense specifics of a particular substantive concern much
more than the ongoing embodiment of an underlying theoretical domain. In turn, NES
drafters felt the need to capture those specifics. As a result, in no other realm do we need
to be as precise about what we can (and cannot) assert about their continuity.
Despite these caveats, the situation in the domain of cultural values and social
policy was not as desperate as this prologue might suggest. In every year, one of the two
major sub-dimensions that emerged from an exploratory factor analysis did gather the
leading items from public arguments in the ‘culture wars’. (Hunter 1991) Most
commonly, this meant something on women’s roles; while item content shifted, this was
actually the longest-running cultural focus in the NES. For example:
Some people feel that women should have an equal role with men in running
business, industry, and government. Others feel that women’s place is in the
home. (1976-2000)
This same sub-dimension then reliably picked up the item (or items) on abortion policy,
which was not simply part of some women’s role index. And they picked up a recurring
item on the public role of religion, actually the first introduced by the NES in a conscious
attempt to monitor public preferences on social policy:
Some people think it is all right for the public schools to start each day with a
prayer. Others feel that religion does not belong in the public schools but should
be taken care of by the family and the church. (1964-1968, 1980-2000)
Moreover, while a second main sub-dimension varied more in its content during
the exploratory analysis, there was at least an implicit clue to its identity as well, and
hence an implicit directive on how to proceed with the confirmatory factor analysis.
Convention