Questionnaire design
The questionnaire is at the heart of smartvote Tibet. It helps measure political preferences and gives voters a clear picture of where candidates stand on important issues. Political neutrality is essential. The questions also need to cover a wide range of relevant topics, from current debates to future challenges, and be written in a clear and comprehensible way. The questionnaire builds on the version used in the last elections and was carefully reviewed and updated through several steps:
- Building on a participatory foundation: The first edition of smartvote Tibet was created through a participatory process that invited Tibetans from around the world to share ideas and suggest questions. This foundation helped identify key public concerns and ensure community relevance.
- Systematic review and revision: All questions were reviewed for relevance, clarity, and usefulness in capturing political differences. Some were removed, updated, or reworded, and new questions were added based on thematic research.
- Advisory board feedback: The advisory board provided feedback on the existing questions and suggested additional topics that should be included. Their input helped ensure that different perspectives and community voices are well represented.
- Editorial process: The questions were edited over several rounds. For this task the smartvote Tibet project team has the sole responsibility.
- Quality control: Methodological quality is ensured through scientific analysis and collaboration with the research network Politools. By following this process, smartvote Tibet aims to create a fair, balanced, and reliable questionnaire that helps voters make informed choices and supports a more issue-focused democratic discussion within the Tibetan community.
Matching
In order to match the answers of candidates and voters, smartvote applies an algorithm based on the euclidean distance. Below you find a detailed description of the matching-algorithm.
Positional matching methodology (PDF)smartspider
In order to calculate positions of candidates and voters on the five axes of the smartspider graphs, smartvote Tibet assigns questions to each of the smartspider axes. Below you find a detailed description of the methods, as well as the complete assignment of questions to the axes of the smartspider.