Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Are You Paying Attention?

Pew Research has a quiz with 12 questions.  I got all of them correct, but there was one I was a little uncertain about.  If you decide to take the quiz, after you finish, look at the results page that shows "How You Did, Question by Question."  Question #11, when I looked, was in last place in terms of correct responses, with only 38%.  That's a travesty.   But I suppose the real travesty is that only 6% of Americans can correctly answer this very simple quiz on what's happening in this country.  (Hat Tip to Swans on Tea)

4 comments:

Mule Breath said...

Must be a bit of a bug in the scoring, because id said I missed #4 even though I selected Democrat as my answer. Really sad to read the demographic diferences, with the younger folks being the less accurate.

Lockwood said...

MB- yeah, I looked over (briefly) the full report, and a few things jumped out at me: first, this was done a couple of months ago, which means that it's a bit out of date (though not enough to significantly effect the answers- yet). Second, the percentiles are not adjusted for new respondents, they're based on the originally selected group. I presume that group was selected by accepted "scientific" criteria. Third, dems did worse than reps by a surprising margin- a reverse of the Bush years. I was surprised at first, but I guess the members of whatever party is in power become complacent, while those of the party out of power pay closer attention. I looked at the report after I had posted this, because all three points are important pieces to interpreting what this means.

You're right. It's sad.

Darius Whiteplume said...

I missed two, but I have to admit I have given up on all news. Call it apathy, but I just can't take much more of it. I listen to the classical station now. No news, no weather, no traffic. They tell you what time it is, and what they just played.

Lockwood said...

Darius- I go in spurts and jerk with respect to the news. The last couple of days, I've read almost none. But something will come up and I'll get sucked in again. Then there's that darned feeder, trying to shove stuff down my throat. Convenient, but addictive and compelling.