Contemporary German Political Orientation Questionnaire (CGPOQ, S-CGPOQ)

Abstract

The Contemporary German Political Orientation Questionnaire (CGPOQ) and its brief counterpart, the Short Contemporary German Political Orientation Questionnaire (S-CGPOQ), are culturally calibrated psychometric instruments developed by Demel, Pooresmaeili, Gagsch, Spengler, and Schacht (2024) to evaluate the multidimensional architecture of political ideology within contemporary German-speaking populations. Traditional instruments measuring political ideology frequently rely on unidimensional left-right bipolar continuums or Anglo-American bidimensional frameworks that fail to capture the socio-historical and institutional nuances of European multiparty parliamentary democracies. The CGPOQ addresses these empirical and theoretical constraints through an empirically grounded 20-item inventory reflecting three correlated primary latent factors: Tradition and National Security, Gender and Sexuality, and Global Thinking. Items are rated on a granular 11-point percentage scale spanning from 0% (“completely disagree”) to 100% (“fully agree”).

Psychometric evaluations demonstrate excellent structural and construct properties. The full 20-item CGPOQ exhibits strong internal consistency across the aggregate instrument (Cronbach’s alpha, $\alpha = .91$) and its constituent dimensions: Tradition and National Security ($\alpha = .89$), Gender and Sexuality ($\alpha = .85$), and Global Thinking ($\alpha = .72$). The abbreviated 11-item S-CGPOQ maintains robust psychometric properties for large-scale epidemiological and survey-based research ($\alpha = .81$ overall; subscale $\alpha$ coefficients ranging from $.66$ to $.78$). Confirmatory factor analyses support a tripartite latent structure, with reasonable model fit indices across independent adult samples ($\chi^2/df = 3.33$, $\text{SRMR} = .091$, $\text{RMSEA} = .088$). The instrument demonstrates substantial convergent validity against self-placement metrics, classical conservatism scales, Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), alongside pronounced criterion validity across German political party preferences.

Keywords

Political Orientation, Contemporary German Political Orientation Questionnaire, CGPOQ, S-CGPOQ, Tradition and National Security, Gender and Sexuality, Global Thinking, Political Ideology, Psychometrics, Right-Wing Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation, Cleavage Theory

Authors

The questionnaire was conceived, developed, and validated by an interdisciplinary team of researchers affiliated with the Department for Cognition, Emotion and Behavior at the University of Goettingen and the European Neuroscience Institute Goettingen:

• Ronja Demel (ORCID: 0000-0003-0166-6501) — Department for Cognition, Emotion and Behavior, University of Goettingen, Göttingen, Germany; Email: [email protected]
• Arezoo Pooresmaeili (ORCID: 0000-0002-4369-8838) — Perception and Cognition Lab, European Neuroscience Institute Goettingen, Göttingen, Germany
• Florian Gagsch — Department for Cognition, Emotion and Behavior, University of Goettingen, Göttingen, Germany
• Mareike Spengler — Department for Cognition, Emotion and Behavior, University of Goettingen, Göttingen, Germany
• Anne Schacht (ORCID: 0000-0001-9471-3842) — Department for Cognition, Emotion and Behavior, University of Goettingen, Göttingen, Germany

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Contemporary German Political Orientation Questionnaire (CGPOQ) and its abbreviated counterpart (S-CGPOQ) is to provide an ecologically valid, psychometrically sound, and culturally specific measurement instrument to capture political attitudes in modern Germany. For decades, international social psychology and political science research has operationalized political ideology through single-item self-placement metrics (e.g., standard 7-point or 10-point “left-to-right” or “liberal-to-conservative” scales) or two-dimensional inventories measuring economic conservatism versus social conservatism. Although these frameworks function moderately well within majoritarian, two-party political systems such as the United States, they exhibit marked theoretical and empirical shortcomings when transposed into multiparty European parliamentary systems.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, contemporary political discourse is characterized by shifting political realignments, the emergence of multi-party coalition configurations (spanning the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union [CDU/CSU], Social Democratic Party [SPD], Alliance 90/The Greens, Free Democratic Party [FDP], Alternative for Germany [AfD], The Left [Die Linke], and newer populist formations), and non-linear ideological intersections. For example, voters may espouse progressive stances toward environmentalism and European integration while concurrently endorsing stringent civil border security, or endorse socio-economic egalitarianism while opposing gender-inclusive language and feminist policies. The unidimensional or US-centric bidimensional models inevitably collapse these distinct perspectives into an artificial aggregate, obscuring the precise cognitive-evaluative structures driving voter behavior.

The CGPOQ resolves this problem by isolating the fundamental socio-political cleavages that define contemporary German public debate. Rather than borrowing historical constructs developed during the Cold War era, Demel and colleagues (2024) generated items reflective of active, modern societal disputes, such as gender identity, linguistic reform, military readiness, homeland security, national sovereignty, ecological transitions, and international cooperation. In research settings, the CGPOQ enables social, cognitive, and political psychologists to examine how specific ideological dimensions interact with neurocognitive processing, moral foundations, social perception, affective polarization, and voting decisions. In applied public opinion polling and sociopolitical analysis, the S-CGPOQ offers a lightweight yet valid alternative for large cohort surveys, capturing population shifts across distinct ideological axes without imposing significant participant burden.

Psychological Construct

The CGPOQ models political orientation not as a monolithic identity, but as a constellation of domain-specific attitudes organized across three distinct yet interrelated latent dimensions. These dimensions capture core ideological dilemmas confronting modern democratic nation-states in an era of globalization, cultural diversification, and geopolitical restructuring.

1. Tradition and National Security

This dimension quantifies an individual’s preference for institutional preservation, adherence to established national and cultural traditions, law enforcement efficacy, border control, and national defense readiness. Grounded psycholinguistically in the preservation of societal order and collective continuity, this factor reflects psychological needs for epistemic order, safety, and system stability. High scorers emphasize the necessity of maintaining robust national borders, prioritizing defensive deterrence, enforcing rigorous criminal justice measures, and defending traditional German cultural heritage against perceived disintegration. Conversely, low scorers endorse demilitarization, criminal justice rehabilitation, porous borders, and the evolution or dismantling of rigid national symbols.

2. Gender and Sexuality

The Gender and Sexuality subscale measures attitudes toward non-heteronormative sexualities, gender identity pluralism, institutional protections for LGBTQ+ communities, feminist reforms, and the adoption of gender-inclusive language (Gendersprache). In modern German sociopolitical discourse, gender-sensitive linguistic markers (such as the Gendersternchen or internal capital I) and progressive sexual politics represent highly salient ideological flashpoints. High scores on this subscale reflect progressive endorsement of institutional accommodations for non-binary identities, systemic gender equality mandates, full marriage and adoption rights for queer couples, and the integration of inclusive linguistic practices. Low scores indicate traditionalist, cis-heteronormative views, skepticism toward feminist initiatives, rejection of institutional gender diversity measures, and opposition to linguistic modifications.

3. Global Thinking

The Global Thinking construct evaluates an individual’s worldview regarding cosmopolitanism, supranational governance, multilateralism, European integration, and universal human rights versus national insularity. This dimension reflects the classic political-sociological cleavage of “demarcation versus integration.” Individuals high in Global Thinking endorse active German participation in the European Union, joint global climate remediation strategies, generous asylum policies, and the primacy of universal human rights over state sovereignty. Individuals scoring low on this dimension express nationalist protectionism, euroskepticism, prioritization of domestic economic and civic interests over international alliances, and resistance to supranational regulatory frameworks.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the CGPOQ integrates contemporary social-psychological models of political cognition with political-sociological cleavage theories. Historically, early psychometric assessments treated political ideology as a single bipolar continuum anchored by liberalism/progressivism on the left and conservatism on the right. However, seminal theoretical interventions by Philip Converse (1964) and subsequent empirical work by John Jost and colleagues (2003) demonstrated that ideological belief systems are functional, multidimensional adaptations to core psychological motivations.

Jost’s motivated social cognition framework posits that political attitudes satisfy underlying epistemic, existential, and relational motives. Resistance to change and acceptance of inequality serve to manage psychological needs relating to certainty, security, and threat mitigation. In parallel, John Duckitt’s (2001) Dual-Process Cognitive-Motivational Model differentiates between two independent ideological trajectories: Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), which originates from a belief that the social world is dangerous, unpredictable, and deteriorating; and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), which emerges from a perception of the world as a ruthlessly competitive jungle. RWA primarily dictates social, moral, and traditionalist cohesion, whereas SDO dictates dominance hierarchies and economic inequality.

The CGPOQ maps these psychological underpinnings directly onto European political reality through the lens of Cleavage Theory, originally articulated by Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (1967), and expanded for the 21st century by Hanspeter Kriesi and colleagues (2008). In contemporary post-industrial European democracies, the primary political cleavage has shifted from traditional capital-versus-labor economic struggles toward a cultural-cosmopolitan cleavage, termed the “Universalism vs. Particularism” or “Green-Alternative-Libertarian (GAL) vs. Traditional-Authoritarian-Nationalist (TAN)” dimension. The three factors of the CGPOQ capture this modern cleavage space: Tradition and National Security reflects authoritarian-nationalist defensive motives; Gender and Sexuality reflects progressive-libertarian identity politics; and Global Thinking measures the universalist, integrationist orientation toward supranational systems.

Validity

The validity of the CGPOQ and S-CGPOQ has been rigorously established across exploratory and confirmatory paradigms using adult German cohorts. Demel et al. (2024) systematically evaluated construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity.

Convergent and Divergent Validity

The CGPOQ demonstrates high convergent alignment with established psychological inventories measuring socio-political attitudes. The subscales exhibit theoretically anticipated correlations with:

• Self-Placement: Significant correlations emerge between full-scale CGPOQ scores and standard single-item subjective political self-placement measures (left-to-right political continuum).
• Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA): Marked positive correlations with the Tradition and National Security subscale confirm that individuals high in authoritarian aggression, submission, and conventionalism strongly support national defense, punitive justice, and traditional preservation.
• Social Dominance Orientation (SDO): Significant associations with SDO further validate the hierarchy-enhancing aspects of the Tradition and National Security and Gender and Sexuality (reversed) subscales.
• Convergent Conservatism Measures: Strong associations were documented between the CGPOQ dimensions and historical German conservatism questionnaires, indicating robust construct continuity while demonstrating the enhanced sensitivity of the CGPOQ’s modernized items.

Divergent validity was confirmed by assessing psychological constructs theoretically decoupled from core ideological positions. CGPOQ scores demonstrated expected distinctiveness when evaluated against measures of general trait empathy and intrinsic religiosity, verifying that the instrument measures political ideological attitudes rather than generalized affective traits or universal spiritual belief.

Criterion and Known-Groups Validity

Criterion validity was established by testing the scale’s capacity to discriminate between supporters of different German political parties (e.g., Alliance 90/The Greens, SPD, FDP, CDU/CSU, Die Linke, and AfD). Full-scale CGPOQ and S-CGPOQ subscale scores reliably differentiate between these distinct voter bases in predictable patterns:

• Supporters of Alliance 90/The Greens demonstrated the highest scores on Global Thinking and Gender and Sexuality, paired with lower scores on Tradition and National Security.
• Voters aligning with the CDU/CSU exhibited significantly elevated scores on Tradition and National Security and moderate scores across cultural and international dimensions.
• Supporters of the AfD scored highest on Tradition and National Security while scoring lowest on Gender and Sexuality and Global Thinking.

For the abbreviated S-CGPOQ, a Kruskal-Wallis test across party affiliations yielded highly significant between-group discrimination, $\chi^2(7) = 94.94, p < .001$, confirming that the brief 11-item format retains strong criterion diagnostic accuracy.

Reliability

The psychometric reliability of the CGPOQ was evaluated via internal consistency metrics across diverse German participant samples. The 20-item full instrument exhibits high overall internal consistency, achieving a Cronbach’s alpha of $\alpha = .91$. Analysis of the three subscales confirmed robust reliability across dimensions:

• Tradition and National Security: Cronbach’s $\alpha = .89$, reflecting high item interrelatedness and low measurement error for institutional, national, and security constructs.
• Gender and Sexuality: Cronbach’s $\alpha = .85$, indicating excellent homogeneity among items evaluating gender diversity, LGBTQ+ rights, and linguistic reform.
• Global Thinking: Cronbach’s $\alpha = .72$, an acceptable internal consistency figure for a complex multidimensional attitude domain covering ecological, supranational, and human rights themes.

The abbreviated 11-item version (S-CGPOQ) similarly maintained acceptable internal consistency, presenting an overall Cronbach’s alpha of $\alpha = .81$. The subscale reliabilities for the short form were:

• Tradition and National Security (Short): $\alpha = .78$
• Gender and Sexuality (Short): $\alpha = .77$
• Global Thinking (Short): $\alpha = .66$

Although the S-CGPOQ subscale for Global Thinking demonstrates a modest alpha coefficient ($.66$), this is expected given the deliberate reduction in item count to minimize respondent fatigue in large survey panels. Methodological guidelines suggest that the full 20-item CGPOQ is preferable for individual diagnostic assessments, whereas the S-CGPOQ is well suited for aggregate group-level modeling and high-volume public opinion inquiries.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the CGPOQ was derived through sequential Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) protocols. The initial pool of 47 candidate items was generated from laboratory post-study debriefings at the University of Goettingen, designed to tap modern political controversies in Germany.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

EFA conducted on German adult samples extracted a clear three-factor latent structure accounting for 47.15% of the total cumulative variance. Items exhibiting weak primary factor loadings ($< .40$), significant cross-loadings across multiple dimensions, or high semantic redundancy were eliminated. An empirical decision arose regarding Item 41, which was initially flagged for potential exclusion due to distributional skewness in the primary sample. However, subsequent testing in a broader, more representative subsample demonstrated satisfactory distributional parameters and psychometric performance, leading to its formal retention within the final 20-item model.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

The stability of the refined 20-item three-factor oblique model was subsequently tested via Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The global chi-square test was statistically significant ($\chi^2(167) = 556.80, p < .001$), which is standard for moderately large sample sizes. The normed chi-square ratio indicated acceptable parsimonious fit:

• $\chi^2/df$ Ratio: $3.33$
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $.091$
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $.088$

While the RMSEA and SRMR values marginally exceed traditional strict cut-offs ($< .08$ or $< .05$ per Hu & Bentler, 1999), they remain consistent with acceptable thresholds in broad social-attitude psychometrics, supporting the tripartite structural model. For the 11-item S-CGPOQ, an independent CFA confirmed structural stability and equivalent fit:

• $\chi^2(41)$: $135.992, p < .001$
• $\chi^2/df$ Ratio: $3.32$
• SRMR: $.081$
• RMSEA: $.087$

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational administration, structural layout, and scoring parameters of the Contemporary German Political Orientation Questionnaire are summarized below:

• Instrument Designation: Contemporary German Political Orientation Questionnaire (CGPOQ); Short Contemporary German Political Orientation Questionnaire (S-CGPOQ).
• Test Type: Multi-dimensional self-report political attitude inventory.
• Target Population: General adult population (ages 18 and older), specifically German citizens and residents eligible to engage in German political processes.
• Administration Modality: Standardized electronic survey administration via web or laboratory computers; adaptable for self-administered paper-and-pencil formats.
• Total Item Count:
  • Full Version (CGPOQ): 20 items.
  • Short Version (S-CGPOQ): 11 items.
• Subscale Architecture:
  • Tradition and National Security (Full: 7 items; Short: 4 items)
  • Gender and Sexuality (Full: 7 items; Short: 4 items)
  • Global Thinking (Full: 6 items; Short: 3 items)
• Response Scale: 11-point continuous-percentage scale ranging from 0% to 100% in 10% gradations:
  • 0% = Completely disagree (Stimme überhaupt nicht zu)
  • 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% = Graded disagreement
  • 50% = Undecided / Neutral (Neutral / Unentschieden)
  • 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% = Graded agreement
  • 100% = Fully agree (Stimme voll und ganz zu)
• Scoring and Quantification Procedures:
  • Prior to composite calculation, reverse-coded items within respective subscales must be inverted (e.g., $\text{Score}_{\text{reversed}} = 100 – \text{Raw Score}$).
  • Subscale scores are derived by calculating the arithmetic mean of items belonging to each latent factor, yielding an index from 0% to 100% for each domain.
  • An overall political progressivism/conservatism index can be computed by standardizing or linearly combining the factors, though maintaining subscale independence is strongly recommended to preserve domain-specific variation.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Year of Formal Publication: 2023 (online advance publication) / 2024 (formal journal issue release).
• Commercial Status: Non-commercial instrument.
• Licensing and Usage Fee: Free of charge for academic, educational, and scientific research purposes.
• Permissions and Inquiries: Researchers intending to utilize the CGPOQ or S-CGPOQ for empirical investigations, longitudinal surveys, or laboratory research should contact the corresponding author, Dr. Ronja Demel ([email protected]), Department for Cognition, Emotion and Behavior, University of Goettingen.

References

• Converse, P. E. (1964). The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In D. E. Apter (Ed.), Ideology and discontent (pp. 206–261). Free Press of Glencoe.
• Demel, R., Pooresmaeili, A., Gagsch, F., Spengler, M., & Schacht, A. (2024). Beyond bidimensional measures: Introducing a culturally tailored measure of political orientation. Political Psychology, 45(3), 517–535. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12935
• Duckitt, J. (2001). A cognitive-motivational theory of ideological attitudes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 33, 41–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(01)80004-4
• Duckitt, J., & Sibley, C. G. (2009). A dual-process motivational model of ideology, politics, and prejudice. Psychological Inquiry, 20(2–3), 98–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/10478400903028540
• Hu, L. T., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 1–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705519909540118
• Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129(3), 339–375. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339
• Kriesi, H., Grande, E., Lachat, R., Dolezal, M., Bornschier, S., & Frey, T. (2008). West European politics in the age of globalization. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511790720
• Lipset, S. M., & Rokkan, S. (1967). Cleavage structures, party systems, and voter alignments: An introduction. In S. M. Lipset & S. Rokkan (Eds.), Party systems and voter alignments: Cross-national perspectives (pp. 1–64). Free Press.

Items of the Scale