| Studies of political context have enriched our understanding of what affects citizen issue attitudes. Context may be categorized as discussion partners, group membership, or the presence of a policy. This research further extends the current literature by arguing that issues may be classified based upon Ronald Inglehart's materialism/post materialism dichotomy in order to further test the dichotomy's usefulness.;Two issues were chosen for the current research---one material and one post material to test the theory of whether the political context (as denoted by the presence or absence of a policy) has effects on issue attitudes and whether Inglehart's dichotomy is analytically useful. This paper finds that Inglehart's materialism/post materialism dichotomy is a useful theoretical tool for classifying issues and that its analytical application may also be useful, as long as one understands the limitations of the dichotomy. Thus, using factor scores to create new material and post material variables can be useful tools in studying issues. Moreover, the measure of context used here proved to be more useful in studying the material issue as opposed to the post material issue. This may be attributed to the fact that the post material issue used here is still emerging on the political scene. In light of these findings, more research needs to be conducted to further explore the usefulness as well as the limitations of the materialism, post materialism, and context indicators. |
