Public Knowledge

Here’s what Americans said they learned about the development of vaccines and medical treatments and their advice for handling a future outbreak.

Older Americans, those with more education and men tend to score better on our 12-question quiz about international knowledge. Republicans and Democrats have roughly the same levels of international knowledge, while conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats tend to score better than their more moderate counterparts.

How much do you know about international affairs? And how do you compare with the average American? Take our short, 12-question quiz to measure your international knowledge.

Roughly a quarter of American adults (23%) say they haven’t read a book in whole or in part in the past year.

U.S. adults in this group are less likely to get the facts right about COVID-19 and politics and more likely to hear some unproven claims.

Most Americans (71%) have heard of a conspiracy theory that alleges that powerful people intentionally planned the coronavirus outbreak.

Despite the spread of the conspiracy theories, about three-quarters of U.S. adults say they have heard or read nothing at all about them.

More than half of these social media news consumers say they have encountered made-up news about COVID-19.

Most U.S. adults know what the Holocaust was and approximately when it happened, but fewer than half can correctly answer multiple-choice questions about the number of Jews who were murdered or the way Adolf Hitler came to power, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

A majority of U.S. adults can answer fewer than half the questions correctly on a digital knowledge quiz, and many struggle with certain cybersecurity and privacy questions