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.”

http://www.epi.org/blog/by-the-numbers-income-and-poverty-2015/

Key numbers from today’s new Census reports, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2015. All dollar values are adjusted for inflation (2015 dollars).

Also:

Poverty declined in 2015 by all measures; government programs, once again, kept millions above the poverty line: http://www.epi.org/blog/poverty-declined-in-2015-by-all-measures-government-programs-once-again-kept-millions-above-the-poverty-line/

“The official poverty rate fell by 1.2 percentage points from 2014 to 2015, as annual earnings and household incomes rose significantly for the first time since 2007. Since 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau has also released an alternative to its official poverty measure known as the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). As shown in Figure A, the SPM has consistently indicated that poverty in America is more extensive than the official poverty measure reports. The good news is that the SPM data do show a similar decline in poverty last year to that reported in the official poverty measure. This year’s SPM release reported that in 2015, 45.7 million people were in poverty—roughly 14.3 percent of Americans. Under the “official” poverty measure, 43.5 million people were in poverty, or 13.7 percent of all Americans.”

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/18/what-the-world-thinks-about-climate-change-in-7-charts/

On April 22, leaders and representatives from more than 150 countries will gather at the United Nations to sign the global climate change agreement reached in Paris in December. Pew Research Center’s spring 2015 survey found that people around the world are concerned about climate change and want their governments to take action.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/estimating-student-workload-for-your-courses/62515

“…Among the challenging decisions that instructors face in creating syllabi is the question of how much reading, writing, and other work to assign each week.

“The federal definition of course credit hours assumes a minimum of “two hours of out-of-class student work per week for a semester hour.” According to this metric, a student should assume at least six hours of out-of-class work per week for each 3-credit course.”

Note: “at least”

Also: http://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2009/credit.html

http://www.pewresearch.org/2016/08/01/flashpoints-in-polling/

Can polls be trusted? This question is on the minds of seemingly everyone who follows the 2016 campaign, though it is hardly unique to this election cycle. The answer is complicated, thanks to myriad challenges facing polling and the fact that pollsters have reacted to these challenges in disparate ways.

Some polls are conducted literally overnight with convenience samples and undergo little or no adjustment. Others are painstakingly fielded for days or even weeks with robust designs and may be adjusted using cutting-edge techniques. These dramatic differences, which have been shown to affect accuracy, are often opaque to news consumers. What follows is a big-picture review of the state of polling, organized around a number of key flashpoints with links to references and research for those who want to better understand the field.