When a user completes one of our fine Political IQ tests, their gain from the experience is rather straightforward. They receive the instant satisfaction of a Political IQ score rating that evaluates their performance relative to others, and while I would imagine this pursuit is done purely out of self-interest, you and I also stand to learn something every time one of these diagnostics is completed, albeit less directly. Here’s how it works:

When a test is finished, the selected question answer-choices are recorded (anonymously mind you) and stored in our database. Hypothetically, lets imagine that the database has recorded 1,000 unique responses to a particular Political IQ economy question. Now, because each of our questions test for a user’s awareness of relevant facts - like say, the fact that the real growth-rate of the U.S. GDP in 2008 was 1.1% - the response data can be extrapolated as a measure of public awareness regarding the knowledge necessary to correctly answer the question.

For example, suppose a question asking for the actual 2008 U.S. GDP growth-rate offers four possible answer-choices - 0.1%, 1.1%, 2.1% and 3.1% - and out of 1,000 total respondents only 1 out of every 4 select the correct sum, 1.1%. Since we know that if a person randomly guessed the answer 1,000 times they would guess correctly about 1 out of 4 times, we can conclude that practically no respondents had had precise knowledge of the correct figure beforehand. Thus, with very simple statistical analysis of our questions we can gain insight about which facts are typically public knowledge and which are not.

However, the correlation between our our test-taking sample and say ‘the average American’ remains extremely unclear. For the time being, I am under the impression that any person who has not only found our website but has also elected to take a particular P.I.Q. test is quite likely to be more knowledgeable than the “average person” when it comes to a selected political test topic.

That being said, there is still plenty to take away from the data. To demonstrate, let’s take a look at a question dealing with the constitutional amendment process: