Measuring Science Knowledge:A Controversy? Wow

Here's an interesting post that criticizes a broader measure of what people know about science because it apparently eliminated questions about evolution and Big Bang theory.

NCSE's Joshua Rosenau decried the decision, saying, "Discussing American science literacy without mentioning evolution is intellectual malpractice ... It downplays the controversy." Also reportedly dismayed by the decision was the White House. "The Administration counts on the National Science Board to provide the fairest and most complete reporting of the facts they track," Rick Weiss, a spokesperson and analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told Science.

No real surprise.  Like it or love it, the Bush administration was never particularly evenhanded when it came to science. 

But . . . it's more complicated than bad guy conservatives trying to hide good science.  As George Bishop, a survey guy of some repute, says in a quote from the posting above, the wording of the questions often are better measures of belief than knowledge.

A pdf of the missing section is here.  I will explore the report in more detail tomorrow, because it's fascinating stuff in comparing what Americans know versus others about science.

The News ... Tomorrow

The lede:

America's news executives are hesitant about many of the alternative funding ideas being discussed for journalism today and are overwhelmingly skeptical about the prospect of government financing, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism in association with the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) and the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA).

Read more here in a report by the Pew Center or the full, longer report here.

It's fun to dip into other fields to see how they approach similar theoretical questions.  In this study, people are examined as political consumers who boycott or buycott.  Fascinating stuff.

Its measure of "political cognition" includes two dimensions: "political knowledge" and "political interest."  Below are the three political knowledge items.

• As far as you know, does the federal government spend more on social security or on foreign aid?
• Would you say that one of the parties is more conservative than the other on the national level?
• How much of a majority is required for the US Senate and House to override a presidential veto?

The political interest item is a single question, pretty basic, so let's focus on above.  Is this enough?  Dunno.  As far as I can tell, no Cronbach's Alpha is reported for the three items, so we don't know how well they hold together.  And I'm nitpicking here on a study that's actually quite interesting, tying together a typology of political consumers with key variables -- but, curiously, no media factors are included.

ANES and Evaluations of Government

The ANES is seeking possible questions for its 2010-2012 Evaluations of Government and Society Study (details here).  These will be Internet-based surveys of a random sample of U.S. adults that focus on -- obviously -- how people evaluate government.  What better time, given the Tea Party environment, the growing Republican power, the overall disenchantment with government that we seem to be seeing?

According to the call for questions:

Specifically, we have in mind here attitudes about the performance of the Obama administration on the major issues of the day, evaluations of Congress and the Supreme Court, identification with and attitudes about the major political parties, and levels of interest in and engagement with national politics. This is primarily because these perceptions are unmistakably correlated with both presidential vote choice and levels of political participation. We intend to measure each of these topics at multiple points throughout the two-year period preceding the 2012 elections. However in addition to these subjects, we envision that each of these surveys would explore a particular aspect of these political perceptions.

We're talking five rolling cross-sectional waves with lots of potential to theoretically get at what's going on out there beyond the mere snapshot surveys presently available.

Of course, being the mass comm guy I am, I wonder what media questions should be included.  ANES tends to undervalue the media.  Sure, there are the basic exposure and attention items to broad-based media (TV news, newspapers, etc.), but rarely does it burrow down to the now vital network or program level.  If Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are truly fueling an anti-government sentiment, then we need to get at exposure and response to those specific hosts, those programs, and even more broadly -- watching Fox News.
 
I asked what media items might be included and the answer was ... none, yet, so propose some.  So that's what I hope to do, but it's a little more difficult to generate a theoretical perspective versus a normative one, and ANES loves theory in its proposals.  So I'm gonna give this some thought because it would be nearly criminal to attempt a major undertaking to understand anti-government evaluations without taking these media folks, and their audience, into consideration. 

Suggestions welcome.

Bias vs. Bucks

More than half of Americans believe media bias is the biggest problem in politics today.

And yet Fox News remains so very popular.  Go figure.

A Politico story reports on the survey of about 1,000 U.S. adults.  It finds 55 percent see media bias as the biggest issue while 32 percent blamed money.  Thirteen percent either didn't care or found the false dichotomy so off-putting they refused to answer any more stupid survey questions.

Hell Freezes Over

Hijacking the blog. 

My department (Journalism) voted Tuesday to get rid of its three majors (newspapers, magazines, and publication management) and consolidate them into a single major called ... journalism.  This simple, seemingly logical move took years and cost thousands of lives.

But don't worry, academe fans.  While we have one major, we now have sequences coincidentally called -- wait for it -- magazines, publication management, public affairs (newspapers) and visual journalism (which we always had, the sequence formerly known as photojournalism).

In academe, even when hell freezes over, curiously nothing changes.

I have absolutely no way to connect this to the traditional theme of the blog.  Then again, I don't have to. It's my blog.

Priming and Levels of Political KnowledgeBeware the Moderates

We often study -- or expect to find -- nice and neat linear relationships among our variables, but it's often more complex than that.  A recent Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly article proves this point by noting theoretical explanations that argue those moderate in political knowledge act very differently than those with high or low political knowledge.

In this study they were looking at priming.  What's that?  It's how some message or factor influences how we process or remember subsequent messages.  Think of the times you've gone to a movie theatre and watched a scary film.  Come out more cautious?  Looking deeply at shadows you normally ignored?  That's priming.  It fades after a time.

According to theory, moderate levels of political knowledge should result in greater priming effects by political messages.  What theory?  Let's not get into that today, because I feel lousy and don't want to spend all this time typing, so take my word for it.

The JMCQ piece found exactly this, that "individuals with minimal knowledge are more likely to reject media primes, as are those extremely knowledgeable -- albeit for entirely different reasons."

That's damned important, that caveat.  Yeah, low and high knowledge folks act the same way in response, but for very different reasons.  High knowledge folks tend to be more experienced with politics, with news, to be more critical because they've been the subject of stories or coverage or know people who have.  Low knowledge people are more critical because of a lack of trust in institutions but mostly because they have little direct experience with media.  Thus the moderates, they're the ones most open to media primes.

There's an ultimate message here, but I'm struggling to decide exactly what it may be -- other than moderates (I consider myself politically a radical moderate who hates everyone equally) are not to be trusted.