I took that very test after I saw that Jonah Goldberg took it. I thought I was going to get "committed conservative", but I ended up with "ambivalent right", just as Jonah did.. I share his opinion in that I didn't really like the questions on it and that it didn't frame the issues all that well. I also think that these questions should've had more than 2 choices(like 5-6 gradated answer choices), as it would better fit the nuanced answers I wanted to give. Some of them were like trying to pick the answer choice that was a smidgen closer to my own views.
Given that this was Pew, and not the Libertarian Party or some fly-by-night Facebook data miner, I wouldn't be surprised if the original study participants received MANY more questions, and the ones extracted for the test we took were the subset that actual had some predictive value in terms of a cluster model that splits respondents into groups that emerged from the original longer questionnaire.
I believe they narrow a few questions to purposely force a tilt to one side or the other. More questions might have been better but a definite bias has to be established. Otherwise everyone is squishy.
Fair and insightful points. While I still think that these questions could've framed the issues better, no political quiz is going to get it perfectly right.
Committed Conservative. Guess I am not quite disillusioned enough yet.
I scored as "Ambivalent Right" as well.
I took that very test after I saw that Jonah Goldberg took it. I thought I was going to get "committed conservative", but I ended up with "ambivalent right", just as Jonah did.. I share his opinion in that I didn't really like the questions on it and that it didn't frame the issues all that well. I also think that these questions should've had more than 2 choices(like 5-6 gradated answer choices), as it would better fit the nuanced answers I wanted to give. Some of them were like trying to pick the answer choice that was a smidgen closer to my own views.
Given that this was Pew, and not the Libertarian Party or some fly-by-night Facebook data miner, I wouldn't be surprised if the original study participants received MANY more questions, and the ones extracted for the test we took were the subset that actual had some predictive value in terms of a cluster model that splits respondents into groups that emerged from the original longer questionnaire.
I believe they narrow a few questions to purposely force a tilt to one side or the other. More questions might have been better but a definite bias has to be established. Otherwise everyone is squishy.
Or: these things don't allow for nuance and force us into a similar situation as with the two-party system.
Fair and insightful points. While I still think that these questions could've framed the issues better, no political quiz is going to get it perfectly right.
Surprise! FLAG & FAITH conservative here.
Establishment liberal. Not really a surprise.