Data Feed: Congress’s productivity, e-reading rises, alternative degree education
A daily roundup of fresh data from scholars, governments, think tanks, pollsters and other social science researchers.
Politics
Congress might be more productive and less partisan than you think, Sunlight Foundation
Our politics may be polarized, but that’s nothing new, The Washington Post
Are Christie’s political plans bottlenecked? With topline, NBC News/ Marist Poll
Ads attacking health laws stagger outspent Democrats, The New York Times
Prosecutorial discretion closures continue unabated in immigration courts, TRAC Syracuse
Economy
Minority women downsize their ambitions due to bias, Catalyst via Harvard Business Review
Paper or plastic? How Americans buy stuff, NPR
More Americans say they’re worse off financially than a year ago, Gallup
Bankers’ stock awards jet higher, The Wall Street Journal
Beige book on current economic conditions, Federal Reserve
Real average earnings fall 0.3%; and CPI increases 0.3%, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Category: Data Feed
In most states, jobless benefits capped at 26 weeks
Number of states where the maximum duration of unemployment benefits is 26 weeks.
Now that the effort to extend federal unemployment benefits appears dead, jobless Americans have only regular unemployment insurance to fall back upon. Those benefits are capped at 26 weeks in the great majority of states (as well as in Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands), acc0rding to data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The regular unemployment insurance program is funded jointly by the states and the federal government, and within broad guidelines, each state can set its own benefit levels and eligibility rules. Two states allow people to collect benefits for longer periods: Massachusetts (30 weeks) and Montana (28 weeks); seven states, mainly in the Southeast, have set their maximum durations below 26 weeks.
Florida stands out as having among the tightest rules in the nation. Under a 2011 law, the maximum duration of benefits is tied to the state’s unemployment rate. The time limit was 19 weeks until this year, but because of falling unemployment (6.4% as of November) the maximum dropped to 16 weeks for new claims filed after Jan. 1.
The federal “emergency unemployment compensation” program, which made benefits available for as many as 47 weeks on top of the state maximums, expired at the end of 2013. One of the two proposals that failed Tuesday in the Senate would have extended the emergency program for three months; the other would have extended it for 11 months.
The social life of health information
The online health community and the media lit up this week in a debate over whether it’s tasteful, appropriate or even beneficial to discuss one’s health problems with the world on social media.
While there’s been some discussion of the topic before, the news this week involved two prominent journalists who raised questions about one woman’s public approach to her life with stage IV breast cancer. Lisa Bonchek Adams, a 44-year-old mother of three, has lived with cancer for six years and developed a following among others diagnosed with cancer as well as clinicians, journalists and people who simply appreciate her perspectives.
Her tweets and blog posts address topics such as her approach to talking to her kids about her illness, her medical treatments and thoughts about facing the end of life. The Guardian’s Emma Keller wrote a column stating that “Adams was dying out loud.” A few days later, The New York Times’ Bill Keller (who is Emma’s husband) wrote a column relating his father-in-law’s “calm death” from cancer and asked whether Adams’ public updates about her health are the right approach.
We’ll leave the taste debate aside and instead look at the data about how many Americans gather and share health information online and whether there are any known benefits to doing so.
The Pew Research Center has studied the social life of health information since 2000 when we first measured how many people use online resources to find information or connect with others about health conditions.
Our latest national survey on the topic finds that seven-in-ten (72%) adult internet users say they have searched online for information about a range of health issues, the most popular being specific diseases and treatments. One-in-four (26%) adult internet users say they have read or watched someone else’s health experience about health or medical issues in the past 12 months. And 16% of adult internet users in the U.S. have gone online in the past 12 months to find others who share the same health concerns.
Topics: Health, Social Media
College enrollment among low-income students still trails richer groups
Higher education long has been seen as one of the best ways out of poverty, but connecting low-income students — even the high-achieving ones who presumably are best prepared for college-level work — with colleges and universities remains a challenge. On Thursday, President Obama is expected to meet with more than 100 college presidents at the White House to discuss ways of enrolling more low-income minority students and helping ensure more of them graduate.
College enrollment among low-income students has generally increased over the past several decades, according to data from the 2013 Digest of Educational Statistics (an arm of the federal Education Department). But the Great Recession and weak recovery have eroded the gains of recent years, and middle- and upper-income students remain far more likely to go to college. Read More →
Topics: Education
Pew Research increases share of interviews conducted by cellphone
Pew Research Center is making an important change in the way that we survey Americans by telephone. In the coming months, 60% of interviews in our national polls will be conducted via cellphones and 40% on landline phones. Over the past year, the ratio has been half cellphone, half landline.
We’re doing this because more Americans today no longer own landlines and rely only on cellphones. When we conduct our random-digit-dial phone surveys, we want to ensure that we’re reaching a sample of the population that is representative of the public. This shift has been gradual. When Pew Research started calling cellphones in 2008, they comprised 25% of our respondents. We increased that percentage to 33% in December 2009, to 40% in July 2011 and finally to 50% in January 2013.
According to the most recent report from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, four-in-ten U.S. adults owned only a cellphone in 2013. Hispanics, African Americans, younger adults and the poor are more likely to use only a cell phone. By increasing the number of cellphone-only respondents, we can also ensure that we’re more accurately representing these groups.
In addition to capturing more of these “cell onlys”, this change also yields a better representation of the nearly one-in-five people (about 18%) who have both kinds of phones but rely primarily on their cellphones. These “dual users” who are contacted for surveys via cellphones are also demographically distinct and need to be properly represented in national samples. Among the people we interview on cellphones, about half only use cellphones and the remainder are “dual users.”
Cellphone interviewing costs more and takes more interviewer time than those conducted on landlines, but the improvement to the quality of our surveys is clear. For example, even with half of our interviews being conducted on cellphones, just 19% of respondents in our current surveys are under age 35; nationally this group comprises 31% of the adult population. We project that the share of young adults represented in our surveys will grow to 22% with our shift to more cellphone interviews.
Reaching the young adult population and ensuring they are properly represented in national surveys has always been a challenge for survey researchers. Our adjustments will still take us far short of the target of 31%, which means we will continue to make statistical adjustments to bring our samples into alignment with the population – not only on age, but other demographic characteristics through a process known as “weighting.”
And moving forward, we will continue to make adjustments to our survey methodology to address the changing technological landscape. Some have already suggested that in today’s mobile society, landline interviewing could be dropped entirely since nearly every American has a cell phone. But the current research suggests that we are not there–not yet, at least.
Some 7% of Americans have landline phones with no wireless access in their homes, and a significant number of people who have cellphones in their home are still not viably reachable over that device, either because another individual is the primary user, or because their cellphone is off most of the time, except for in emergencies. For the near future, we expect that a blend of cellphone and landline interviewing will continue to provide the broadest cross-section of the American population.
More information about our polling:
Why am I never called to be polled?
What good are polls?
Do pollsters have a code of ethics?
Why don’t you just conduct surveys on your website?
Other frequently asked questions
Topics: Research Methodology
Data Feed: Christie’s ‘bully-meter,’ Congress ratings, global gay rights
A daily roundup of fresh data from scholars, governments, think tanks, pollsters and other social science researchers.
Politics
54% of N.J. voters say Christie a leader; 40% say bully, Quinnipiac
34% approve of congressional Democrats, 25% Republicans, ABC News/ Washington Post
Congress job approval starts 2014 at 13%, Gallup
Members of Congress rated on productivity, Brookings
Government itself still cited as top U.S. problem, Gallup
Money in politics with a gender lens, National Council for Research on Women via Roll Call
Economy
Tracking American counties in recession and recovery, National Association of Counties
For recent grads, good jobs really are hard to find, The Wall Street Journal
Unemployment insurance duration by state, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Men’s economic status and marital transitions of fragile families, Demographic Research
Airline consumer complaints decline 23.6%, Bureau of Transportation Statistics
Category: Data Feed
What to anticipate in 2014? Many young adults say soccer’s World Cup
Nearly six-in-ten Americans (58%) say they’re “especially looking forward” to the Winter Olympics next month, including roughly equal shares of each age group. But when it comes to this year’s other quadrennial international sports event – the World Cup – it’s largely young people who are anticipating it.
It’s not that young people aren’t looking forward to the Winter Olympics, too: 53% are looking forward to the Sochi Games, which is roughly the same share as other ages. But they stand out for their anticipation of this year’s World Cup in Brazil in June and July, with the U.S. poised to face an exceptionally tough opening group of opponents. Four-in-ten adults ages 18-29 (40%) are looking forward to the World Cup, compared with just 13% of adults 50 and older.
Roughly the same share of the public is looking forward to the World Cup this year (22%) as it was in 2010 (23%), when young people were also the most likely to express anticipation.
Topics: News Interest
French more accepting of infidelity than people in other countries
French President Francois Hollande may have hoped his first press conference of 2014 would offer an opportunity to discuss his agenda and boost his sagging political fortunes, but when he faced reporters today he confronted questions about his personal life – specifically his alleged affair with actress Julie Gayet. Dealing with accusations of marital infidelity is something no politician wants to do, but as the leader of France, Hollande is perhaps in a better position than most. Compared with others around the world, the French are blasé about marital indiscretions. Read More →
Topics: Western Europe
As Congress debates extending benefits, high long-term unemployment persists
The median number of weeks without work among unemployed Americans (as of December).
The median duration of unemployment ticked up to 17.1 weeks last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means that last month, more than half of all 10.3 million Americans officially considered unemployed had been out of work for more than 17.1 weeks, and half for less.
The December jobs report landed in the midst of an ongoing debate in Congress about whether, and how, to extend federal benefits for the long-term unemployed. In most states benefits run out after 26 weeks, but during periods of high unemployment Congress typically extends them. However, the most recent extension ran out at the end of 2013, cutting off payments to an estimated 1.3 million jobless people. The Senate is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to end debate on a bipartisan proposal to further extend benefits for the long-term unemployed.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Discussion of long-term unemployment often centers on average, rather than median, duration of unemployment. (The average duration in December, adjusted for seasonal variations, was 37.1 weeks.) But, as Fact Tank explained last year, the average skews higher because it includes hundreds of thousands of people who’ve been out of work for years.
Although both the average and median durations of unemployment have come down from their recent highs, they still remain more than double pre-Great Recession levels. As of December, 37.7% of all unemployed Americans — nearly 3.9 million — had been jobless for 27 weeks or longer. (And bear in mind that the unemployment figures don’t include the estimated 5.9 million people who say they want a job but aren’t, for whatever reason, currently looking for one.)
Category: Daily Number
Topics: Employment
Q&A with author of U. Mich. study on preferred dress for women in Muslim countries
In a blog post last week, we wrote about the survey findings from seven Muslim-majority countries about women’s style of dress by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. The post generated a lot of attention in the U.S., Europe and Middle East as well as on social media and many people wanted to know more about how the research was conducted and the results, such as the dress preference expressed by men compared with women.
We went back to the researchers and asked them to share more data and to talk to us more about their methods and their findings. Here’s our Q&A with lead researcher Mansoor Moaddel, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland and a Research Affiliate at the University of Michigan’s Population Studies Center. Read More →
Topics: Gender, Muslims and Islam, Religion and Society
