The survey was composed of 11 questions selected based on their ability to predict further knowledge in different areas of science.
Higher educational attainment amongst participants showed consistent association with answering more questions correctly.
Differences in number of questions answered correctly also varied by gender, ethnicity, and political beliefs.
This summary is drawn from the Pew Research Center article “What Americans know about science” published on March 28, 2019. The Pew survey relied on responses from 4,464 randomly selected U.S. adults participating in the American Trends Panel on January 7-21, 2019.
The following are two noticeable changes from the raw data to the published conclusions:
The ethnicity breakdown shared in the article is white, black, or Hispanic. Although “other” ethnicities responded, their responses are not reflected in the discussion within the report.
As stated in the methodology, question responses were converted into binary variables based on “correct” or “incorrect”. The questionnaire permitted a response of “not sure”, but results from this category do not seem to be included in the reporting.