Neat! I’ll put less confidence in such surveys now. HOWEVER! Many of the questions in such surveys are plain-ol’ 50⁄50, and I have no idea how they could be very biased.
As an example, here is a scan from Carpini and Keeter’s What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters. You’ll notice that, in table 2.7, only 42% of Americans knew that Soviets suffered more deaths than Americans during World War 2. Seems like a coin flip to me, unless they asked, “Who had the most deaths during World War 2?” and ignored all answers besides US and USSR. I still think Americans are pretty durn ignorant of most political and historical matters. (Myself included, for many of the questions. I have no idea who my state’s congressmen are (and I don’t really care.))
But then, I’ve never been one to compare this to modern cultural knowledge. I see that as irrelevant. Asking about fresh memory vs. deep memory doesn’t tell you about political knowledge per se. Responses should be compared against questions of similar difficulty.
Neat! I’ll put less confidence in such surveys now. HOWEVER! Many of the questions in such surveys are plain-ol’ 50⁄50, and I have no idea how they could be very biased.
As an example, here is a scan from Carpini and Keeter’s What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters. You’ll notice that, in table 2.7, only 42% of Americans knew that Soviets suffered more deaths than Americans during World War 2. Seems like a coin flip to me, unless they asked, “Who had the most deaths during World War 2?” and ignored all answers besides US and USSR. I still think Americans are pretty durn ignorant of most political and historical matters. (Myself included, for many of the questions. I have no idea who my state’s congressmen are (and I don’t really care.))
But then, I’ve never been one to compare this to modern cultural knowledge. I see that as irrelevant. Asking about fresh memory vs. deep memory doesn’t tell you about political knowledge per se. Responses should be compared against questions of similar difficulty.