Saturday, July 04, 2009

Pew News IQ Score

Every so often I go take the Pew News Test at Pewresearch.org. I’m not sure how often they update it but if you go back about every 3 months it’s usually different.

There are 12 questions and after you finish they compare how you did to the demographic scores on each question compared to a random survey. I usually get all 12 right. If you read or listen to the news with any regularity it’s sort of hard not to. This time around 6% got all the questions right.

Men do better than woman answering an average of 8.3 questions right to 6.7. Not surprisingly the more education you have the higher you tend to score. College graduates averaged 8.7 correct while those having graduated High School got an average of 6.2 correct.

The older you were, the better you did. Those over 50 years of age got 8.4 correct, those between 30 and 49 got 7.8 correct and those between 18 and 29 5.9 correct.

The question that the most people got correct was which party controlled the House of Representatives. 86% knew it was the Democrats. The question that the fewest got right was approximately how many U.S. military deaths have occurred in Iraq. Only 38% knew it was approximately 4,300. I find that sort of disturbing.

I guess it could be worse. But then again, it could also be a whole lot better.

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