The fascinating results

We had many interesting results from this study, and while we were able to identify a few trends, more data would be needed for a stronger argument. Of the 78 respondents, 11 were conservative, 51 were liberal, and 16 were independent or undecided. Of those 11 conservatives, 7 were in the “high literacy” category (for the purposes of this study, “high literacy” means there were 100+ books in that respondent’s household growing up). 30 of the liberal respondents were “high literacy”, so conservatives tended to have a strong literacy background 64% of the time and liberals tended to have a strong literacy background 59% of the time.

 

For the political knowledge section, 9 questions were asked, and percent correct out of 9 was calculated for conservatives vs liberals. Respondents that answered “I don’t know” or left a question blank were considered incorrect. Conservatives averaged a 72% on the quiz, whereas liberals averaged a 78% on the quiz. We also compared quiz scores of “high literacy” respondents to non-”high literacy” respondents, with the averages being 74% and 78% respectively. This result seems surprising at first, however, it must be noted that there were a few outliers in the non-”high literacy” category, and the average of this group without those outliers is 71%. So, our data showed a slight correlation between literacy background and political knowledge, a relatively stronger correlation between political affiliation and political knowledge, and no correlation when it came to literacy background and political opinion. While we were only able to collect qualitative data to analyze the relationship between literacy background and political opinion, a thorough examination of the responses showed no notable trends.

Here are our results visualized:

This chart shows the number of people who took the survey that identified as Liberal, Conservative, and Independent/Undecided.

 

 

 

This chart shows the average quiz scores (as a percentage) for Conservatives, Liberals, and Independents/Undecided.

 

 

 

 

This chart shows the average quiz scores (as a percentage) for those in the high literacy category and those in the low/moderate literacy category.

 

 

 

 

This chart shows how many high literacy respondents identified as Conservative, Liberal, and Independent/Undecided.