Saturday, June 4, 2011

Pew Research News Quiz

I like to take quizzes on line, especially if those quizzes allow me to see how I compare to the public in general.  I have always been a somewhat competitive and intelligent person.  It was important to me to perform well on tests and to do better than those around me.  I wasn't so competitive (at least not always) that I had to be the best or perfect, but I always wanted to be, at the very least, above average.

So this morning, while I was looking over my Facebook feed and playing some mindless games, I saw a link posted by Red State.  It was a link to a political IQ quiz at the Pew Research Center that features eleven questions on current political news.  Of course I immediately clicked on the link to take the quiz and leave Farmville alone for awhile.

Before I brag on myself and tell how I did on the quiz, let me say a few words about the general results of the quiz.  I will not reveal any of the specific questions or how many people got each question correct.  At the end of the quiz, you can check to see a complete breakdown of how many people answered each question correctly, and a breakdown by demographics such as age, education, and gender.

On a quiz like this, it probably will not come as a surprise that the older and more educated a person was, the more answers that were answered correctly.  For example, college graduates on average answered 7.4 questions correctly, while those who had a high school education or less answered only 4.9 questions correctly.  Those 50 and older answered 6.4 questions correctly but those in the 18-29 age range answered only 4.8 correctly.

Only 6 of the 11 questions were answered correctly by at least half of the respondents, which is pretty sad when you think of it.  I hope you will take the time to take the quiz here and let me know if the comments how you did.  My score?  I answered 10 of the 11 questions correctly which is better than 90% of the population in general.  Then again, I am in all three of the demographics that performed the best on the quiz; college educated, age 50 and over, and male.
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3 comments:

  1. 10 of 11. I'm pissed though. Should have been 11 for 11!

    I was sure 50% of Americans were Fatshits, not 25%.


    aloha!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, the only question I missed was the same one that Don did, and I also thought that the correct answer was 50%. This survey is another communist plot--isn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  3. The question that I got wrong was the one regarding the greatest expenditure in the budget. I thought for sure it was interest on the debt, but I guess that is to come. What is interesting in these surveys is actually how ill informed most of the populace is, and unfortunately, they end up influencing elections.

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