Pew Research Releases Survey Findings on “Distinguishing Between Factual and Opinion Statements in the News”

From the Pew Research Center:

A new Pew Research Center survey of 5,035 U.S. adults examines a basic step in that process: whether members of the public can recognize news as factual – something that’s capable of being proved or disproved by objective evidence – or as an opinion that reflects the beliefs and values of whoever expressed it.
The findings from the survey, conducted between Feb. 22 and March 8, 2018, reveal that even this basic task presents a challenge.
The main portion of the study, which measured the public’s ability to distinguish between five factual statements and five opinion statements, found that a majority of Americans correctly identified at least three of the five statements in each set. But this result is only a little better than random guesses. Far fewer Americans got all five correct, and roughly a quarter got most or all wrong. Even more revealing is that certain Americans do far better at parsing through this content than others. Those with high political awareness, those who are very digitally savvy and those who place high levels of trust in the news media are better able than others to accurately identify news-related statements as factual or opinion.

For example, 36% of Americans with high levels of political awareness (those who are knowledgeable about politics and regularly get political news) correctly identified all five factual news statements, compared with about half as many (17%) of those with low political awareness. Similarly, 44% of the very digitally savvy (those who are highly confident in using digital devices and regularly use the internet) identified all five opinion statements correctly versus 21% of those who are not as technologically savvy. And though political awareness and digital savviness are related to education in predictable ways, these relationships persist even when accounting for an individual’s education level.

Resources
Direct to Report Overview and Table of Contents
Direct to Full Text Report (PDF Version; 69 pages)
Direct to Links to All 28 Report Infographics
Lower-right side of page. 
Direct to Quiz: How Well Can You Tell Factual From Opinion Statements?

Filed under: News