Hey there,

for my research project I am planning to map political party positioning using (Weighted) Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) in STATA. Conducting a usual MDS-analysis is not much of a problem, however, I want to not only model the political parties' distance to each other but also their distance to the respective issue categories (Immigration, Welfare, Army) in the same analysis. The party positions towards the included issue categories are weighted by their salience. For an example of this, please see Bornschier (2010) and Kriesi et al. (2012) in the attachment.

1. Question: How do I methodically and technically include the respective Issue categories in a MDS-analysis?

2. Question: Which are the values that represent the single issue categories in the MDS? Is it the Mean, the maximum value or the maximum salience for these issues?

Thanks a lot in advance!