Communist Manifesto, U.S. Constitution; potato, po-tah-to:
Can the young people you know tell the difference between James Madison and Karl Marx? Sadly, a new national poll reveals that 42 percent of Americans wrongly attribute Marx’s famous communist slogan, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” to one of the country’s Founding documents. Nearly one in five Americans believe this phrase can be found in the Bill of Rights, of all places. You can take some solace in knowing that among young adults, only six percent made this mistake, though 30 percent of them believe Marx’s statement can be found in either the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution.
Seriously, pollsters, please stop asking questions about what’s in our historical documents. We don’t know, okay, we haven’t gotten around to actually reading them yet. Give us a break, we just finished reading Atlas Shrugged last week. . .
December 29th, 2010 | 9:16 am
In fairness to the young adults, this was an online poll, which is to say that it’s worthless.
December 29th, 2010 | 10:31 am
Online polls are worthless? Depends on the sampling methodology.
~70% of the U.S.has broadband internet access
~80% of the U.S. has landline phones (you can’t do phone surveys on cell phones) and of those 10-15% only have landlines for security systems or rarely use the landline phones.
When polling young adults (under 30) the percentage of broadband internet goes up and the percentage of landline phones goes down.
If you didn’t notice in 2008 or 2010, the traditional pollsters were all over the map and their prediction rates (outside of Rasmussen and his robocallers and weighting schemes) performed pretty poorly.
That being said, who knows what the sampling methodologies and data weighting schemes were on this particular poll.
December 29th, 2010 | 10:55 am
I presume that the more intelligent and/or better-educated Americans have better things to do with their time than sit gawping in front of computer screens all day filling in stupid poll-questionnaires …
December 29th, 2010 | 12:09 pm
Again, the sampling methodology matters.
But over 60% of quantitative survey research conducted in the United States is conducted online (15 years ago about 60% was conducted over the phone).
This includes almost all package testing, concept testing, customer satisfaction and advertising awareness research. Polling is a different animal, but there are many ways to do this in a representative manner and in addition data for polling is always (and I mean always) weighted using a variety of statistical measures.
So you presume wrong. Don’t assume that the pop up window asking you to answer a survey on a random website or the invitation on your receipt at a retail outlet or restaurant is what online research is all about.
December 29th, 2010 | 4:05 pm
Clearly, ignorance has some sort of beneficial effect.
Just look at Europe, where the citizens are all better educated than ours, and their countries are all militarily weak and economically dependent on us.
Or otoh, look at China, which is rising to the status of super power and is practically bathing in ignorance.
I think those embarrassing polls are just one more reason to hold our heads high.
December 29th, 2010 | 4:07 pm
Steve,
So I assume from your hot, out-of-left-field defense of online polling, that you are in fact an online pollster. Am I right?
December 29th, 2010 | 4:17 pm
I recall recent polls of young people in Sweden being unaware of what the USSR was like or what had happened in WWII. I recall also being a highschooler (late 60′s) and reading polls showing how ignorant we highschoolers were. While in Romania, I was appalled how little Romanian history its children knew. It’s not just modern American students.
An uncomfortably large percentage of everyone, in every place and time, knows very little about history and geography. (Or math, or chemistry…) The young tend to know less, as adults do stumble across real information over the years, driven home into memory by an experience that actually meant something to them, such as a foreign national marrying in, or deployment, or discovering an ancestor’s connection to an important event.
It may be distressing, but it is hardly alarming, as it is universal. Most of us are intelligent in only those things which offer some visible advantage to us.
December 29th, 2010 | 4:20 pm
I work for a data collection company that does online research (and recruiting for focus groups). I typically don’t chime in that much, but I have a hard time letting ill-informed comments about what puts food on my table go…
That being said, I have no idea of the poll referenced in the post has any merit whatsoever.
December 29th, 2010 | 4:31 pm
Steve, can you link to any page which discusses or cites “you can’t do phone surveys on cell phones”. Federal “Do Not Call” specifically exempts “surveys”, but if there are other rules, we’d be interested. Thanks!
December 29th, 2010 | 4:43 pm
It is not illegal to do surveys on cell phones, it is just much more expensive. The survey methodology most often used in landline phone polling is RDD (random digit dialing). To do this you just need a phone book, because landline telephone numbers are easy to obtain.
Cell phone numbers, however, are not easy to obtain (wireless providers don’t sell these lists) and for polling in a particular geography cell phones are useless because cell phone numbers aren’t tied to specific geography the same way landline numbers are. (People can maintain the same cell phone number and move halfway across the country).
The link below discusses some of these issues.
http://www.aapor.org/Do_Cell_Phones_Affect_Survey_Research_/2438.htm
December 29th, 2010 | 10:09 pm
Is this an online poll in the sense that anyone with an Internet connection can either participate or not, and there is effectively no sampling methodology?
Or is it a poll conducted according to normal sampling methodology, using the Internet as the medium?
There is a colossal difference between the two. If somebody posts a poll and anyone can just go answer it, it’s not remotely a valid poll. If a polling company contacts individuals based on sampling methodology and controls for the relatively small population differences in Internet connectivity vs. telephone usage, and has then use an Internet connection and a browser rather than a telephone to respond, it’s no different from a scientifically conducted phone survey.
December 30th, 2010 | 8:32 am
If you want to test people’s historical knowledge, try short answer quizzes on local, American, Occidental, and world history.
I will wager the people they polled had no clue where the phrase came from and just guessed from a proffered menu of responses.
Of the social and cultural problems we face, the widespread inability of people to recognize bits and pieces of Marx is not a priority. Time spent learning European intellectual history is time not spent on learning other things of value. It is utile to drill a broad range of people on the fundamentals of American history, geography, and civics, preferably in elementary school. Beyond that, put your effort into teaching youths who are receptive and interested.
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