The Executive Approval Database

Abstract Understanding the dynamics of the public’s response to the economy requires time-series measures. Collecting data over sufficient time periods and across varied national contexts, however, presents several conceptual and practical challenges. This chapter discusses how the Executive Approval Database addresses these challenges. The authors compare approval ratings to other commonly used indicators of popular support for leaders, such as trust, vote intentions, and past vote shares. They then describe how the Executive Approval Project generates estimates of approval ratings for presidents, prime ministers, and governments. They identify and address conceptual, methodological, and measurement problems and explain how these address issues of reliability and validity. The chapter closes by discussing the properties of the dataset and the specific countries examined in this volume.