Thinking about public opinion, what is the significance of “issue consistency” and “levels of conceptualization”?


Issue consistency is how consistent an individual American’s opinion is about an issue and is measured in two ways. Measuring across time shows that individual Americans are not likely to have the same opinion at two different points in time.  For example, same-sex marriage opinions in Texas have changed from unfavorable (~30%) to favorable (over 50%) over a short amount of time from 2009 to 2017. Measuring across issue domain tells us that knowing what an individual thinks about one issue doesn’t really tell you much about what they think of another issue.
Levels of conceptualization are used to categorize people by use of ideological language in explaining their opinions.  There are five levels, the first is “ideologues”, when people rely on abstract concepts to make judgements about political objects.  Second, are “near-ideologues” who use ideological terminology, but don’t always use it correctly.  Third, are “group interest”, where people evaluate political objects with respect to their treatment of particular groups.  Fourth are “nature of the times”, when evaluations of candidates and parties are tied to general perceptions about how things are going.  Lastly, “no issue content”, where focus is on personalities or family traditions without any evidence of political thinking.