In class this week we took a public knowledge quiz that was comprised of various domestic and international political knowledge questions. I scored a 10 out of 12 which, according to the results, was higher than 92 percent of the participants. The results also showed a further breakdown of the results in the form of three categories, with each also containing sub-categories. I was curious to see how those outside of the political science realm would score so I decided to give the quiz to sixteen individuals that I work with at AT&T and a few willing customers.
I feel that the sample size was adequately represented, as it contained at least four participants from each sub-category. The results were quite different from my own and from my classmates who posted their scores in the discussion forum. Only one participant, a 52 year old male, answered at least 8 out of 12 correct. Three participants answered 7 out of 12 correct, seven answered 6 out of 12 correct, four answered 5 out of 12 correct, and one participant answered only 3 out of 12 correctly. The results were consistent with the sub-categories breakdown of correct answers by gender, education and age. There were two questions that revolved around international affairs that none of the participants answered correctly, while on the domestic side, there was only one.
While I didn't have as much time as I wanted to further analyze the results, they were eye-opening nonetheless. None of the participants were students of political science, and many answered that they weren't very politically involved unless it was an election year. When asked where they get their political information, most of them said they just watch the news. Over half said that that their main media outlet was Fox News, which given our location, wasn't that surprising. Only one participant, the one that scored 8 out of 12, said that he watches news from outlets such as BBC and Al Jazeera.
I recognize that my sample was purely from one geographical area and that it most certainly isn't reflective of the United States as a whole, but in terms of political knowledge, I think that it is safe to say that we are lacking. Take the knowledge quiz below and feel free to share your results as well as anything else:
Christopher,
ReplyDeleteI got 9/12 correct, scoring better than 86% of the public, below 8% and the sames as 6%. Well done!!