Comment on Open thread, 18-24 August 2014

Wed, 20 Aug 2014 02:58:57 GMT

Dan Kahan's other experimental work over the last 8 years or so probably has further useful ideas. Adapting tests from the heuristics & biases literature (e.g. this old review article) may also work, depending on what you wish to accomplish.

There is a potential pitfall in directly testing people's general knowledge on contested issues. People who score poorly on test questions about issue X could simply complain that the test designer is the one who's wrong about issue X, not themselves, and unless you're absolutely sure of the correct answers to the relevant questions yourself, you can't eliminate the possibility that the test is unfair. One way to skirt around this problem is to ask people about uncontested, well-established facts like election results in countries with relatively democratic reputations, or by asking people about things you know to be false because you made them up, like fake, exaggerated quotations from political figures.

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