Willingness to communicate about politics (WTCAP): A novel measure of interpersonal political discussion

This paper lays out a theoretical argument for a novel survey measure of interpersonal political discussion; willingness to communicate about politics. WTCAP is defined as a state-based variable referring to a person's likelihood or propensity to actively engage in an informal political discussion in a specific situation. Complete data from 291 participants were used to test and validate this novel measure. Ultimately a six-item survey instrument was found to best fit the data. This measure was found to be a valid and reliable measure of the construct.