General Social Survey
razib | September 25, 2009I made a comment earlier that college students, and by inference college graduates, are not as intelligent as they used to be on average. I made that comment based on what I'd seen in the General Social Survey. What I had seen was a decline in average WORDSUM score over the years (WORDSUM being a variable which records how many correct responses individuals received on a vocab test). But I'll lay out the data here.
I limited the sample to whites between the ages of 22-35. That way I get a snapshot of those who graduate from university in a particular time period, and I need to limit the…
razib | August 22, 2009Update: Follow up post.
This Michael Lind piece bemoaning liberal contempt for white Southerners made me want to look a bit deeper and compare interregional differences and similarities. I went into the General Social Survey and limited responses to whites only and compared by region. The regions in the GSS are those of the US Census:
I combined New England & Mid Atlantic as the Northeast, the North Central regions as the Midwest, Mountain and Pacific as the West, and finally the other three regions as the South. Results below....
Northeast Midwest South…
razib | July 21, 2009I just listened to a radio segment on public sentiments toward the Apollo space program expenditures in hindsight. The polling had a small N, 3 people in Los Angeles on the street. But it got me wondering: who supports the space program? There is a variable in the GSS, NATSPAC, with a large sample size, which states:
We are faced with many problems in this country, none of which can be solved easily or inexpensively. I'm going to name some of these problems, and for each one I'd like you to tell me whether you think we're spending too much money on it, too little money, or about the right…
razib | July 8, 2009Over at Secular Right I break down attitudes toward a host of issues as a function of class and party identification. It is interesting to see the issues where class matters more than party, and those where party matters more than class, and where one segment is an outlier. Below the fold are a few questions of possible specific interest to ScienceBlogs readers.
Lower = No high school to some college
Higher = Bachelor's degree or higher
Repub or lean Repub
Dem or lean Dem
Lower
Higher
Lower
Higher
Humans evolved from animals
29.7
47.1
43.7
79.6
Will not eat genetically…
razib | April 30, 2009John Schwenkler points me to Rod Dreher's shock that religious people seem to support torture more than the non-religious:
And get this: the more often you go to church, the more pro-torture you're likely to be!
What on earth are these Christians hearing at church?! Very sad indeed.
John notes:
There are plenty of data showing that Christians' attitudes toward abortion, contraception, and the rest don't differ very significantly from those of the rest of society; the real factor, of course, lies in political affiliations, and I have little doubt that most of the relevant findings can be…
razib | April 9, 2009The GSS has a variable, GENEGOO2, with an N ~ 2,500, that asks:
Some people say that genetic testing may cause trouble. Others think it is a wonderful medical advance. Based on what you know, do you think genetic testing will do more harm than good or more good than harm?
Below the fold are charts which show attitudes based on politics, highest degree attained, vocab score, attitude toward Bible, sex, religion, income, socioeconomic index and race.
Low income at the left:
Low socioeconomic index at the left: