Monday, February 16, 2009

Handy Political Compass Quiz

In case you haven't noticed, I've not had much in the way of surplus energy/time for blogging of late. Stubbornly persistent flu, a burst of practice-building efforts, and General Life Stuff have intervened, as they are wont to do (as any of you who are acquainted with any three year-olds doubtless know, the task of being an outboard superego for such a beast is a formidable one!).

And, of course, I am still scrambling up the learning curve in search of secure footing in reconciling myself to the current occupant of a certain House on Pennsylvania Avenue.

So, in the meantime, I thought I would pass along a useful little quiz for identifying one's position on a variety of dimensions of political thought:

This quiz will let you know where you fall on social liberties, economics, foreign policy-- even the culture war. In truth, this isn't a quiz so much as a set of statements that you must agree or disagree with. Based on your responses we will place you on a graph--also termed a political compass--that separates social liberties from economic opinion.


Such quizzes are a dime a dozen, and most are pure crap. However, the results of this one lined up pretty intuitively with how I informally assessed my evolving political views. For giggles, I herewith present my results:

My
Political Views

I am a right moderate social
libertarian
Right: 5.15, Libertarian: 3.34




My
Foreign Policy Views

Score: 5.56




My
Culture War Stance

Score: -0.62


I thought it might be entertaining for any readers out there to have a go at this, and see where they stand/fall. If nothing else, it might make for some good sport in the Comments section!

Have at it!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey 'Cyte,

Yes, quite interesting. There were a bunch of presuppositions in some of the questions which made answering them difficult. I found myself asking, "under what circumstances?" a lot. But overall, my results were pretty much as expected. FWIW, here they are (Google wouldn't accept the img tags, so I just threw in the numbers):

Right: 5.5, Libertarian: 7.28

Foreign Policy Views Score: -6.88

Culture War Stance Score: -7.33

I'm fairly certain these types of quizzes don't actually measure anything meaningful, but they do make good food for thought and discussion.

Good luck getting over that flu!

-Mike

Noocyte said...

Hey, Mike!

Thanks for the well-wishing on the flu front. I was a soggy noodle for a day, a jar of wet sawdust for a few days after, then the cough took hold, and I finally had to overcome my aversion to antibiotics (breeding better bugs daily!). I was rewarded for this with a bout of well-nigh narcoleptic fatigue which lasted for over a week (best guess as to mechanism: depletion of intestinal bacteria leading to less efficient absorbtion of nutrients...but whothehell knows). Up to a good 92% of "normal" at last.

Yah, the validity of these instruments is highly questionable, but I rather liked the likert-scale model of endorsement, with accompanying intensity modifiers. And from the pudding-proof angle, it was interesting how well the results gibed with my subjective self-assessment. Further support was provided by how well our respective results matched my intuitive sense of just how widely we differ on some dimensions (e.g., foreign policy), and align on others (Left/Right on economics...which, I'm sure you recall, has been quite the trek for yours truly!).

Best,

'Cyte.