The Pew Research Center regularly conducts a poll among US citizens on their knowledge of international affairs. The survey this year polled 3,581 adults from March 21 to 27, 2022 and asked 12 questions (4 of which were used last year). If you wish to take the quiz yourself before I outline the results, just click here.
The results this year were close to those of last year. The summary of the results is as follows:
“On average, Americans give more correct than incorrect answers to the 12 questions in the study. The mean number of correct answers is 6.3, while the median is 7. But the survey finds that levels of international knowledge vary based on who is answering. Americans with more education tend to score higher, for example, than those with less formal education. Men also tend to get more questions correct than women. Older Americans and those who are more interested in foreign policy also tend to perform better.
“Political party groups are roughly similar in their overall levels of international knowledge, although conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats tend to score higher on the scale than do their more moderate counterparts.”
Conservative Republicans had strong scores but liberal Democrats scored slightly higher. Not surprisingly, knowledge correlated strongly with intensity of the issue to specific political affiliations (the question about the siting of the US Embassy to Israel, for example, earned conservative Republicans the highest scores).
The Pew Research Center does a very good job of describing the methodology of the poll. I think the Center’s polls are very reliable.
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