Political Misinformation Belief Ratings Before 2016 U.S. Election

Experimental data from two studies conducted prior to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. The dataset contains participant ratings of belief in factual and incorrect statements made by Donald Trump, with subsequent re-ratings after corrections. It was authored by Briony Swire and last updated in June 2020.

Use Cases

• Analyze belief rating changes for misinformation items following corrections, segmented by participant political affiliation.
• Model the impact of source credibility attribution on belief ratings for factual and incorrect statements.
• Investigate the relationship between belief updating on misinformation and voting preference stability.
• Examine the effect of explanation source (own vs. opposition party) on belief updating for corrected information.

Strengths

• Data is from controlled experiments with a clear pre-post correction design.
• Includes key variables like political affiliation, source attribution, and belief ratings.
• Published under a CC0 1.0 public domain license, allowing for unrestricted reuse.

Limitations

• Sample size and number of data rows are unknown, limiting assessment of statistical power.
• Data is temporally limited to the period before the 2016 U.S. election and may not generalize.
• Specific column names and data structure are not provided, complicating direct analysis.

Provenance

Source

Dryad data repository.

Collection Method

Data collected from two controlled psychology experiments.

Time Range

Prior to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.

Freshness

Last updated in 2020; no update frequency specified.

Geography

Study location unspecified; context is U.S. politics.