The new survey includes a mixture of standard multiple-choice items as well as questions that use photographs, maps and symbols. It was conducted completely online Sept. 30-Oct. 11, 2011, among a random sample of 1,168 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
That's kinda interesting. It mixes photos of well known public figures, a couple of maps, an image or two, as well as standard political knowledge questions. Take the test. You'll get a random assortment of questions, not all of them, but I don't want to get into specifics because I'd prefer you took the test first.
I can say this: it's an interesting approach and one full of methodological and theoretical nuances. Are there really visual learners? The research says probably not. But folks who watch a lot of TV news, they may be more likely to correctly answer the image questions. Unfortunately the report doesn't address that, but it does tell us Republicans do better on a lot of the political and geography questions, at least compared to Democrats. This doesn't control statistically for education, etc., so it's not as meaningful as you might think. A table near the bottom does break it down by age and education. It's worth a look, but without a more multivariate approach, we can't really get at visual versus textual questions. But it's interesting to note that respondents with a high school education or less tended to do better on the visual versus the non-visual questions. Worth exploring further.
Oh, by the way, I answered all my questions correctly.
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