Gender balance

Pew research has an online poll to test your news knowledge. Some of the questions are very easy, some slightly less so. None are terribly hard, though I did think I might have gotten one of them wrong (I didn't.)

After taking the quiz, you can see how it broke down along gender lines. The average man had a percentile rank of 56%, meaning the average man scored above average (men pulled the average up by 6%.)

Women on the other hand scored far below, at 39%.



Pew also showed the breakdown by question. The only question on which women outscored men was the one with the answer "Oprah Winfrey".

Pew did not ask people for general party affiliation. I would love to know if Republicans outscore democrats in very basic knowledge.

Steve Says: I got 'em all right too, but like you wasn't really sure about one or two. It's interesting too to look at the percentages of people getting each question right. (Spoilers ahead!) More people know Ben Bernanke than Harry Reid. Only 28% know we've lost 4000 service people in Iraq, but 46% percent know it was Kosovo that split from Serbia recently. Of course, 84% know O is campaigning for Obama.

Ann says: The two examples you state--the number of troops killed and Kosovo independence--were also interesting for other reasons. Those with college degrees scored worse on those questions, than people with less education. The Kosovo imbalance surprised me, but not the troop numbers. I think, again, that would be a good question to be able to see political demographics. My guess is that Democrats believe the death toll is considerably higher than it is--and since the college educated are disproportionately Democrats, it would skew their data.