The POLAT Panel: Spanish Political Attitudes Survey

The Spanish Political Attitudes Panel Dataset (POLAT) is an ongoing panel study carried out in Spain. The present research note introduces the dataset, and presents some results of the first six waves, fielded in political context defined by a prolonged economic recession, major corruption scandals and widespread mass protests (2010-‍2014). The longitudinal aspect of the dataset allows researchers to trace changes and exploit within-individual variation in a wide array of political, social and economic attitudes and behaviors. The note offers validity checks for some of the key empirical indicators against the benchmark of concurrent surveys, including the European Social Survey. Finally, the note illustrates the potential of POLAT for the analysis of change in political attitudes and behaviors.