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Presenting Survey Results

We can learn a lot about presenting survey results by looking at what experts do. The scientists at Pew Research presented findings from a Christmas in America survey . Take a look at their work. 1. Focus on highlights. For general audiences, select the most important facts. For example, it is no big news to say over 90% of Christian Americans celebrate Christmas. But to learn there’s a drop in celebrating Christmas as a religious rather than a cultural holiday is news (46% down from 51% in 2013). It’s also interesting to learn that younger persons are lower on the religious emphasis than are older adults. Of course, to focus on highlights, you have to create good survey questions in the first place. So, check out the items Pew reports to make their findings more meaningful (e.g., include age groups and religious affiliation in your survey). 2. Use percentages and graphics to depict trends. On fact 2, “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays,” Pew shows a change

How to Measure Wisdom

Thinker As you might guess, psychological scientists disagree on the definition of wisdom. Here's one definition with a list of features that captures some scientific thinking ( from evidenced-based ). Psychologists are finding that societies do share an agreed understanding and conception of wisdom. Wisdom is a construct composed of the following traits: Deep self-knowledge Social intelligence and life skills Broad compassion Emotional management Multi-model perspective-taking Uncertainty navigation Several scales have been developed to measure various characteristics. As with many psychological survey items, measures of wisdom rely on self-report. In this post, I will present one scale and provide links to information about additional wisdom scales. 3 D Wisdom Scale (3DWS) Monika Ardelt is a professor of sociology at the University of Florida. She developed the Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (2003). Her model of wisdom included the fol

Marriage & Divorce Rates by Age and Year

Two charts illustrate how the divorce rate and the remarriage rate in the United States vary across seven age groups. See the captions in the charts for the sources of these data. The rate of divorce is much higher for younger persons than for older persons but the rate of divorce has declined among younger persons than for older persons for the two-year comparison—1990 and 2015. Remarriage rates are also much higher for younger persons but there is a significant drop since 1990 for younger persons compared to the relatively stable rate for older persons. What is not obvious in these data are changes in people living together. About Creating Surveys and understanding  Applied Statistics... FIND my books on AMAZON