Political Change Explained, Validity, and a Cognitive Perspective

Political Change Explained, Validity, and a Cognitive Perspective Global conditions affecting politics are changing as conditions including pervasive information technology (IT) and climatic change gain in importance. Techniques that can analyze how people's political cognitions are similarly changing need be developed in order to understand the implications of changing conditions affecting politics. This paper presents aggregate cognitive mapping as a technique that can evaluate how people's cognitive habits are changing with new global conditions. Cognitive studies are extensively defined in this paper with examples from fourteen different areas of political science that are shown to have used cognitive studies as a tool for analysis between 2002 and 2009. The extent cognitive studies have been used in political analysis recommends this technique as possible in studying political change. Greater research validity is attained because the cognitive technique presented here is aligned with current social science movements. Aggregate cognitive mapping is accomplished by coding a sample's responses on an X and Y axis. Developments in qualitative methods that emphasize interpretative and action research comprise one contemporary social science movement wit