A substantial body of research has investigated the determinants of conspiratorial beliefs, yet little is known about different conspiracy theory endorsement profiles, that is, what types of conspiracy believers are there.

Our latest study used cluster analysis on a set of 52 conspiratorial statements tapping into six conspiracy theory types to identify and validate conspiracy theory endorsement clusters in a randomly drawn sample of the Finnish population (N = 1077). The cluster solution was then further validated in a social media-based convenience sample (N = 772).

Four conspiracy theory endorsement clusters with distinct profiles were identified and validated across the samples. The main difference between the clusters was the level of endorsement: the more one endorses one type of conspiracy beliefs, the more they tend to endorse other types of conspiracy beliefs. Participants who belonged to more conspiracy theory-endorsing clusters held more pseudoscientific beliefs and had lower political trust than participants in the less conspiracy theory-endorsing clusters.

The results provide strong evidence for the existence of four conspiracy theory endorsement profiles and support the notion of a general conspiracy mindset.

https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.70080

#ClusterAnalysis #ConspiracyProfile #ConspiracyBelief #PoliticalTrust #PseudoscientificBeliefs

I've updated my #Stata cluster utilities

These utilities add to Stata's cluster capabilities, particularly when clustering from a distance matrix, rather than variables. Stata's "cluster stop" commands do not work in the manner you might expect with distance matrices.

The updates are mainly minor changes to keep up with newer versions of Stata. #clusteranalysis #sociology #quantmethods #datascience

Install:
. net from https://teaching.sociology.ul.ie/statacode
. net install clutils

I just replied to a query re optimal size of cluster solutions, a bit outside my area of expertise.

I pointed at Everitt et al as a classic: https://books.google.fr/books/about/Cluster_Analysis.html?id=htZzDGlCnQYC&redir_esc=y

Bouveyron, Celeux, Murphy & Raftery, much more up to date https://math.unice.fr/~cbouveyr/MBCbook/

My own code to estimate Calinski-Harabasz & Duda-Hart for #Stata (since Stata's built-in code doesn't work from distance matrices, only the raw data):
https://ulsites.ul.ie/sociology/sites/default/files/wp2016-01_0.pdf

My main point was, however, "there is no correct answer"

#ClusterAnalysis