Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Acceptance of Evolution by State

There is a well known chart showing the public acceptance of evolution in 34 countries. The United States was second to last. Thus far, I have been unable to find a similar chart showing a breakdown of the acceptance of evolution by state. Looking around though I did find a freely available data set that has the raw information. The Pew Forum's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey has the question:
Q.10c Evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth

RESPONSE CATEGORIES:
  1. Completely agree
  2. Mostly agree
  3. Mostly disagree
  4. Completely disagree
  5. Don't know/Refused (VOL.)
Based on this data, here is the chart with the completely and mostly choices merged to just Agree and Disagree.
Here is the chart without merging the completely and mostly choices.
Finally, here is the chart with the scores for treatment of evolution in the state's science standards. The scores come from Why Science Standards are Important to a Strong Science Curriculum and How States Measure Up (Louise S. Mead and Anton Mates). The NCSE has a brief summary.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for sharing this informational blog. It really helps me a lot especially that Im doing some research now.

    Pauleen
    www.imarksweb.org

    ReplyDelete