http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/25/oversampling-is-used-to-study-small-groups-not-bias-poll-results/

With less than a month to go before Election Day, not all American voters are aware of their states’ voter ID requirements. A new national survey finds that the confusion runs two ways: Some voters live in states that do not require identification to vote but think it is needed, while others living in states that do require IDs mistakenly believe they do not need one to vote.

About four-in-ten voters (37%) living in states with no identification requirement incorrectly believe that they will be required to show identification prior to voting, according to a survey conducted Sept. 27 to Oct. 10 among 3,616 registered voters on Pew Research Center’s nationally representative American Trends Panel. About six-in-ten (62%) in these states know they do not have to produce a photo ID to vote.

In the states that do require or request identification, more than three-quarters (77%) of voters know it is needed. However, about one-in-five voters (22%) in these states do not know a photo ID is needed, which may result in inconvenience or could prevent them from voting at all.

Important for folks to understand!

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/25/oversampling-is-used-to-study-small-groups-not-bias-poll-results/

http://fedscoop.com/new-report-highlights-skyrocketed-agency-o-m-spending

Some agencies are spending 90 percent or more of their IT budgets on operations and maintenance, a report released last week found.

The IDC Government Insights report found 77.7 percent of proposed agency IT budgets for fiscal year 2017 are going to operations and management, with the remaining sliver dedicated to systems development and enhancement.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/04/federal-officials-may-revamp-how-americans-identify-race-ethnicity-on-census-and-other-forms/

Federal officials are moving ahead with the most important potential changes in two decades in how the government asks Americans about their racial and Hispanic identity. They include combining separate race and Hispanic questions into one and adding a new Middle East-North Africa category.

If approved by the Office of Management and Budget, the revisions would be made on the 2020 census questionnaire and other federal government surveys or forms. Federal statistics about race and Hispanic identity are used to enforce civil rights laws, assist in political redistricting and provide data for research that compares the status of different groups.

The changes would be intended to improve the accuracy and reliability of race and ethnicity data by making it easier for people to answer questions about their identity, according to federal officials. Many people, especially Hispanics, Arabs and people of multiple origins, are unsure about how to categorize themselves on census questionnaires and other federal forms.

Full report (10/4/2016; PDF; 114 pages)

“As might be expected, people’s views about whether there is scientific understanding about climate change tie more closely to their science knowledge and education levels. For example, people who know more about science also tend to perceive strong consensus among climate scientists that human activity is responsible for climate change. However, only Democrats, not Republicans, hold beliefs about scientific consensus which vary with their level of science knowledge. Democrats holding medium or high levels of knowledge are more inclined to perceive strong consensus among climate scientists than are those with low science knowledge levels. A similar pattern occurs in public views about scientific understanding. People’s beliefs about how well climate scientists understand whether climate change is occurring and the causes of climate change are significantly linked with science knowledge among Democrats. But there is no difference among Republicans with high, medium or low levels of science knowledge in their perceptions of climate scientists’ understanding of whether climate change is occurring or scientists’ understanding of the causes of climate change. Similarly, there is a tendency for people with more science knowledge to expect harms to the Earth’s ecosystem to occur because of climate change, but this pattern occurs only among Democrats.”

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/doubt-about-power-poses/

” It is a real-life case of p-hacking and the power of understanding the true nature of p-hacking.”