Publications

The set of 12 questions from the new Pew Research Center survey is, of course, only a small fraction of the possible topics and approaches to measuring public knowledge and understanding about science. In this section, we show the 12 questions from the new survey alongside other science knowledge questions asked across a handful of […]

People’s science knowledge sometimes varies by age, race and ethnicity, though the patterns are far from uniform across this set of 12 questions in the new Pew Research survey. On some questions, younger adults tend to know more than their elders (such as which kind of waves underlie cellphone calls). But that pattern is reversed […]

Men tend to answer more of these science knowledge questions correctly than do women, the new Pew Research Center survey found. Men score an average of 8.6 out of 12 correct answers, compared with women’s 7.3 correct answers. Some 24% of women answer 10 or more questions correctly, compared with 43% of men who did […]

In the new Pew Research Center survey, more-educated Americans generally score better overall in answering science-related questions than those who have a high school degree or less. And those with a college degree or higher tend to perform better on the toughest questions. Adults with a college or postgraduate degree are more than twice as […]

Among the science questions in the new Pew Research Center survey that were easiest for most to answer correctly: 86% identify the Earth’s inner layer, called the core, as its hottest part.[9. numoffset=”9″ This question was adapted with permission from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) grade 8 science assessment items in […]