DescriptiveRepresentationCalculator Package Tutorial

2025-12-14

Overview

DescriptiveRepresentation is an R package for measuring descriptive representation in political bodies. It implements key functions from Gerring, Jerzak, and Oncel (2024), offering an accessible approach to modeling:

The package therefore provides four main functions:

Each function measures a slightly different concept linked to the ideas in Gerring, Jerzak, and Oncel (2024). In this vignette, we show how to install and use these functions, illustrate a few worked examples, and discuss conceptual underpinnings relevant to descriptive representation. Installation

To install and load the DescriptiveRepresentationCalculator package, run:

# or install.packages("DescriptiveRepresentation")
# install.packages("remotes")  # Install remotes if not already installed
# remotes::install_github("cjerzak/DescriptiveRepresentation-software/DescriptiveRepresentation")
library(DescriptiveRepresentationCalculator)

Background

How well do political bodies reflect the demographic features of the population they serve? This question is at the heart of descriptive representation, and the work of Gerring, Jerzak, and Oncel (2024) offers a systematic way to measure and analyze this phenomenon.

The approach builds on the Rose Index of Proportionality that captures how far a political body’s group shares deviate from the population’s group shares. Concretely: \[ R = 1 - \frac{1}{2} \sum_{k=1}^{K} |g_{p_k} - G_{b_k}| \] where \(g_{p_k}\) is the population share of group \(k\), and \(G_{b_k}\) is that group’s share in the body of interest \(b\). The index ranges from 0 (no descriptive representation) to 1 (perfect descriptive representation).

Note that there are a range of other possible weighting factors in the equation. In the package, the default parameters (a = -0.5 and b = 1), producing the Rose Index. The user can modify the a and b parameters to fit other affine transformations of the underlying absolute deviations: \[ R = b + a \sum_{k=1}^{K} |g_{p_k} - G_{b_k}| \] The Rose Index has nice theoretical properties in that it is bounded between 0 (total representation mismatch) and 1 (complete match between elite and population group shares).

Random Sampling Model

One of the insights of Gerring, Jerzak, and Oncel (2024) is to compare observed descriptive representation to what would be expected under a random sampling model—if individuals (or group shares) were randomly drawn into the political body.

This expected value establishes a baseline: how much shortfall or surplus we might attribute purely to compositional factors (like the body’s size or the population’s group diversity).

Divergences from this random baseline can reveal additional, potentially systematic, sources of under- or over-representation.

Package Workflow

1. Expected Representation

The function ExpectedRepresentation() computes the expected level of representation (the “expected Rose Index”) under a random sampling model:

ExpectedRepresentation(
  PopShares, 
  BodyN, 
  a = -0.5, 
  b = 1
)

Arguments:

`PopShares`: Numeric vector of group-level population proportions (e.g., `c(0.25, 0.5, 0.25)`).
`BodyN`: Integer, the size of the political body in question (e.g., `50L`).
`a`, `b`: (Optional) Affine transformation parameters. By default, `a=−0.5`,`b=1` (for the Rose Index).

Returns: A single numeric value representing the expected representation score.

Example

# Suppose the population is split into 3 groups: 25%, 50%, 25%.
# We have a political body (say, a legislature) of size 50.

PopShares_example <- c(1/4, 2/4, 1/4)
BodySize_example <- 50

ExpectedRep <- ExpectedRepresentation(
  PopShares = PopShares_example,
  BodyN = BodySize_example
)

ExpectedRep
## [1] 0.9227715
#> Prints the expected representation under random sampling

In many settings, this expected value serves as the baseline to which we compare actual data. Larger bodies and more homogenous populations will tend to have higher expected representation scores under the random sampling model.

2. Observed Representation

To compare theory to reality, we compute the observed representation of any group in a political body:

ObservedRepresentation(
  BodyMemberCharacteristics = NULL,
  PopShares,
  BodyShares = NULL,
  a = -0.5,
  b = 1
)

Arguments:

Returns: A single numeric value for the observed representation score.

Example

# Observed scenario: A 6-seat body with members: "A", "A", "C", "A", "C", "A"
# The population shares are: A=1/4, B=2/4, C=1/4.

ObsRep <- ObservedRepresentation(
  BodyMemberCharacteristics = c("A","A","C","A","C","A"),
  PopShares = c("A"=0.25, "B"=0.50, "C"=0.25)
)

ObsRep
## [1] 0.5
#> Prints the observed representation index

If group "B" had no seats here, we’d expect a larger observed discrepancy from the population’s proportions, lowering the representation score.

3. Standard Deviation of Representation

Finally, SDRepresentation() estimates the extent to which the observed representation can vary around its expected value under random sampling. It performs Monte Carlo simulations, drawing random compositions of the body and re-computing the representation score each time:

SDRepresentation(
  PopShares, 
  BodyN, 
  a = -0.5, 
  b = 1, 
  nMonte = 10000
)

Arguments:

Returns: A single numeric value summarizing how much representation fluctuates (in standard deviation units) around the expected representation under a random selection model.

Example

SDRep <- SDRepresentation(
  PopShares = c(0.25, 0.50, 0.25),
  BodyN = 50,
  nMonte = 10000
)

SDRep
## [1] 0.04093503
#> Prints the residual standard deviation

In contexts with many social groups or a smaller legislative body, the variance (and thus the SDRepresentation) tends to be larger.

4. Relative Representation

The function RelativeRepresentation() computes the difference between observed and expected representation, providing a direct measure of how a body deviates from the random sampling baseline. It can optionally standardize this difference by the standard deviation under the random sampling model:

RelativeRepresentation(
  BodyMemberCharacteristics,
  PopShares,
  a = -0.5,
  b = 1,
  standardize = FALSE,
  nMonte = 10000
)

Arguments:

Returns: A scalar giving the difference between observed and expected representation. If standardize = TRUE, this difference is expressed in standard deviation units.

Example

# Same body and population as before
BodyMembers <- c("A", "A", "C", "A", "C", "A")
PopShares_example <- c("A" = 0.25, "B" = 0.50, "C" = 0.25)

# Compute relative representation (observed - expected)
RelRep <- RelativeRepresentation(
  BodyMemberCharacteristics = BodyMembers,
  PopShares = PopShares_example
)

RelRep
## [1] -0.2735596
#> Prints how much observed representation differs from expected

# Standardized version (in SD units)
RelRep_std <- RelativeRepresentation(
  BodyMemberCharacteristics = BodyMembers,
  PopShares = PopShares_example,
  standardize = TRUE
)

RelRep_std
## [1] -2.403115
#> Prints the standardized relative representation

A positive value indicates the body is more representative than expected under random sampling; a negative value indicates less representation than expected. When standardized, values beyond ±2 suggest the observed representation is unlikely under the random sampling model alone.

Interpretation

Expected Representation (ExpectedRepresentation()) helps analysts understand the baseline level of representation when selection is effectively random.

Conversely, Observed Representation (ObservedRepresentation()) is the real-world result, showing how close or far a body’s membership is from the population distribution.

SDRepresentation (SDRepresentation()) quantifies how much randomness alone could explain variation in representation, shedding light on when observed deviations might be plausibly attributed to other (non-random) factors like institutional rules or discrimination.

Relative Representation (RelativeRepresentation()) directly compares observed to expected representation, providing a single measure of deviation from the random sampling baseline. When standardized, it expresses this deviation in terms of standard deviations, enabling cross-body or cross-country comparisons on a common scale.

Use Cases

Conclusion

The DescriptiveRepresentation package operationalizes key ideas about descriptive representation from Gerring, Jerzak, and Oncel (2024). By offering easy-to-use functions for measuring expected, observed, and residual variance in representation, the package helps scholars, analysts, and policymakers investigate how factors like body size and population diversity shape the composition of political bodies worldwide.

We hope this vignette gets you started! For any questions or feedback, feel free to open an issue on our GitHub repository.

References

@article{gerring2024composition,
  title={The Composition of Descriptive Representation},
  author={Gerring, John and Connor T. Jerzak and Erzen \"{O}ncel},
  journal={American Political Science Review},
  year={2024},
  volume={118},
  number={2},
  pages={784-801}
}