Making sense of nonsense

The results were somewhat unexpected and tentatively answer our original research question. We say tentatively because the numbers are so close to one another that it’s difficult to say we saw any clear trends. We wanted to know how childhood literacy influences one’s political opinion and political knowledge; our data tells us a strong literacy background makes one more likely to be conservative and knowledgeable about politics/government. Half of the results match our prediction and half don’t, but there was much bias in our research that must be addressed. To start, we only received 78 responses (our goal was 100), and most of these respondents were liberal, so there was a lack of data overall and a lack of data from conservatives. Since conservatives made up only 11 of our responses, the mean of their data was more susceptible to outliers, and these outliers could’ve influenced our averages to give us an inaccurate picture. The way in which political opinion questions were written subtly showed the author’s bias, so this also had the potential to influence our results. Regardless of the research flaws, this data proves that neither major political party can claim academic superiority over another, and this could encourage others to dig deeper into what makes people pick the parties they do (since literacy obviously isn’t the major reason).

 

When it comes to the reasons behind these results, we can only hypothesize. Conservatives proved themselves to be stronger in their literacy skills, and this might be because conservatives tend to come from higher income families (according to this article that talks about demographic stats of democrats and republicans ). These higher income families might have better resources to provide valuable literacy experiences.

 

It makes sense that strong literacy backgrounds correlate to strong political knowledge. If you’re inclined to read more, chances are you’ll learn more information than a non-reader. However, does reading more as a kid put you significantly ahead in your political awareness? Our data says no, but more research would need to be conducted to substantiate this claim.

 

So what’s the verdict?

If you have strong literacy skills, you’ll on average know more about politics.

 

If you’re conservative, you’re slightly more likely to have stronger literacy skills. Does that make you intellectually superior to liberals? Probably not. Sorry.