Suggested Weights for Bridge Grades System

Weighting System: How we prioritize different factors

For the suggested weights, we took two main approaches: one empirical and the other procedural.

In the empirical approach, we started with relationships that we believed the weights should reflect in order to construct this collaboration indicator, giving priority to actions over words. Under this principle, we concluded that “a legislator who helps another with ideas other than moving their projects forward, even if they do not always express it as such, is more collaborative than one who constantly declares themselves to be collaborative but does not provide support in voting.”

Based on this idea, we established ranges in which each variable should be placed to fairly and consistently represent the level of collaboration in Congress. In particular, we ensured that, whenever there was a relationship, variables associated with actions (such as co-authorship) had a higher weight than variables associated solely with communication or expression.

Based on these ranges, a mathematical optimization process was applied to maximize metrics such as indicator stability and ensure that weight combinations did not disproportionately benefit one party over another. This procedure, validated with the support of experts in the field, allowed us to arrive at the weights that today make up this collaboration score.

Source	Weight	Description
A	3.0	Bill authorship with cross-party support
B	2.0	Cross-party cosponsorship
C	1.0	Bipartisan communication sum
D	1.0	Bipartisan communication percentage
E	1.0	Personal attack sum
F	1.0	Personal attack percentage