Better Informed?

The Internet has made Americans feel better informed, according to a new Pew study. The key point -- 76 percent of respondents say the Internet has made "average Americans" better informed, and 77 percent say the net has made "America's students" better informed. You can see the raw questionnaire here.

A couple of points.

• First, this is perception of being informed, not actual knowledge. Perceived knowledge and actual knowledge are positively correlated, but not perfectly so, and there are segments of the population who believe they are better informed than they actually are, and the consumption of certain media can exacerbate this effect (i.e., talk radio). Here respondents were asked not whether they are better informed thanks to the Internet, but rather whether others are better informed. That's a subtle difference.

• There's an interesting table on the types of information available on the net that makes you feel better informed. Look at it (Q34 on the raw questionnaire, but page 2 of the pdf). In most cases people feel better informed, but the fascinating failure, if you will, is for "civic life and government activities in your community," a 49-49 split. Also the net seems to better serve national and international news as opposed to local news (see top of table). That makes sense, as the Internet destroys geography and cobbles us back together based on interests, partisanship, and the rest.

Those are my two takeaways. There's no a lot here otherwise, in part because it appears this is part of a bigger survey in which the results are not yet out.

Preaseason Rankings

In the college football preseason rankings, who nailed it? Who didn't? Let's look at the USA Today preseason poll, just the top five.

1. Florida State
2. Alabama
3. Oklahoma
4. Oregon
5. Auburn

Wow, that Oklahoma ranking was just a bit off (four losses this season). Before you mock USA Today, the AP preseason rankings had the Sooners as #4. The AP had Ohio State a couple of spots higher than USA Today, so in all the AP poll did a (slightly) better job in the preseason.

Admission Numbers

Our latest college admission numbers are out. I always look at these because (1) I want to be depressed and (2) I want to be even more depressed.

They're not that depressing.

Take Journalism/Public Affairs, really the heart and soul of the college. We usually admit 16 students, but it dropped to 9 last semester. The latest report has it at 19. That's heartening. Of those 19, nine had it as their first choice. That number is actually fairly stable, ranging from a low of 4 (Spring 13) to a high of 11 (Fall 12). There's some random walk here, a student or two making what seems like a big difference. Now the depressing part:

Journalism/Public Affairs

• First Choice: 9
• Second Choice: 9
• Third choice: 1

Nothing like walking into a room full of students who'd rather be somewhere else. Oh, wait. I get that all the time. Never mind.

By comparison, public relations admitted 81 students, all of them first choicers. And 112 overall had wanted it as their first choice. If you ever wanted to feel bad about the future of mankind, that's enough to do it.

Now a lot of this will likely change soon. This report reflects the various separate majors of journalism and broadcast news, but with luck (and all the right votes) we'll combine curricula come Spring 2016.

The Politicization of Political Knowledge

We used to think of political knowledge as largely independent of politics, that what people know is a basic, almost fundamental concept. We were wrong.

Everything today seems politicized. Take, for example, the recent HuffPo/YouGov survey on knowledge about the Benghazi report. The Republican House committee investigating Benghazi quietly released its report on a Friday afternoon, a report that essentially found no significant wrongdoing despite all the GOP posturing and Fox News coverage.

Most people knew nothing about the report (the joys of a late Friday release). As you might by now suspect, partisan differences exist. Thirty-eight percent of Republicans thought the report included wrongdoing or intelligence failures (it found none), while 15 percent of Democrats thought so. Check out the link above to learn more. What's interesting about this is Republicans tend to perform slightly better than Democrats on tests of political knowledge, except, it seems, when the knowledge is not what they want it to be.

Okay, so what? Like belief in conspiracy theories, there is a partisan belief system at play. One good theoretical base for this is motivated reasoning -- the notion that people believe what they want to believe, the facts be damned. Another good theoretical approach is selective exposure. Those who rely on Fox News would've been hard pressed to find news about the Benghazi report and an arched eyebrow or tone of coverage by Fox may have sent mixed signals, not unlike how Fox viewers were more likely to continue misbelieving that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

There still are neutral measures of political knowledge, but it's easy to see how even they may be laced with partisan overtones. Take, for example, the standard question of who controls the U.S. House or Senate. Ask that this electoral cycle and GOPers, happy at their wave, will likely be even more accurate. I suspect a lot of Dems tuned out once it became clear they were about to be overwhelmed at the ballot box. So a neutral measure of political knowledge, one used so very often, may not be so neutral after all.

Odds are only Odds

So one of my favorite sites tweeted this earlier today:

Chance committee will rank in Top 4: Alabama 100% Oregon 100% TCU 91% Florida St. 68% Ohio St. 40% Baylor 1% http://t.co/CV2tBxyZXz
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) December 7, 2014

But, as we all know THE Ohio State managed to leap over TCU and snag one of the four spots and the right to be pummeled to death by Bama. So much for 91 percent versus 40 percent. Remember, odds are just odds. And for TCU, the odds may not have been, despite 538, in their favor. There may be only a 20 percent chance of rain, but that doesn't mean it's not gonna rain (especially if you planned a picnic). Indeed, later 538 tweeted this:

Alabama, Oregon, T̶C̶U̶, Florida State, Ohio State: http://t.co/CV2tBxyZXz
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) December 7, 2014

So save those strikethroughs. Never know when you're gonna need them.

What People (don't) Know about Retirement

I often look around for non-political surveys, especially those that measure what people know. In this case, it's a survey that finds people nearing retirement age don't know a hell of a lot about, yes, retirement. At least from a financial standpoint.

The lede (not, sadly, in correct AP Style):

Just 20% of retirement-age Americans can pass a basic quiz on how to make their nest eggs last throughout retirement. In fact, a large majority of people age 60 to 75 with at least $100,000 in assets lack the knowledge they need for a financially secure retirement in areas such as life expectancy, Social Security, long-term care needs, investment risk and more. 

The survey itself was conducted this past summer with 1,019 Americans ages 60-75 with at least $100,000 in household assets, not including their primary home. Best I can tell it was done through online interviews.

Lemme be clear. I would not have done well myself. I didn't know about the "4 percent rule," which has to do with how much you should withdraw annually from your retirement savings. Sixteen percent of survey respondents thought 6 or 8 percent was more likely. You can read a press release here, in Word format, with more details.

Me? I don't really need to know much as I'm on UGA's "optional" retirement plan, which means at some point in the distant future I may have the "option" to retire, but will never really be able to afford it.

And the winner is ...

What's the best journalism program in the country? Does anyone care?

I wrote in November about this [poll...contest...beauty pageant] and, especially, how to skew the results of a self-selected online process (clear your cookies, vote early, vote often). The survey is closed. If you didn't vote you missed your chance (that's the message above if you try to participate now). Click my link above to read the earlier post for details and where the results will be breathlessly reported on Dec. 15, or check back here. I'll report RTDNA's findings.

This is technically a SLOP, a self-selected opinion poll, something no legitimate news organization should ever report without prefacing it with "non-scientific" and "complete bullshit" but "entertaining so we're telling you anyway" because "we failed research methods class" and "anyway we don't have an actual budget to do real polls." If you'll say or write all of the above before reporting the results, you're fine. But given all that ... should you report it at all? Lemme put it in coding terms below:

SET SLOP = BULLSHIT
   IF POLL = "BULLSHIT";
   REPORT = NO;
END

Do I fault RTDNA for doing this poll? Not really. Okay, a little. Alright, maybe a lot. Again, see my earlier post about how such beauty pageants are little more than, well, beauty pageants. I'm not sure you can identify the "best" journalism program or even if a "best" one exists. I sure as hell don't know how you quantify "best" in these terms. By the faculty? The students? The alumni? The facilities? The curriculum? The school colors? SAT scores? GPA? Academic publishing? Professional publishing? All of the above? None of the above? There are lot of dimensions, but I'm not certain that a self-selected opinion poll manages to catch any of them.