I’m posting student responses to the two quizzes linked below (Thanks, Mary for passing along the Nolan test. I think that one is much more interesting). One point that comes up frequently in your responses is that both quizzes don’t do enough to mask the traditionally “liberal” versus “conservative” answer. I tend to agree with this.
In light of our conversation about the parties, I think it’s worth considering how ideology maps onto party.
Does it make more “sense” for those who fall into the libertarian portion of the Nolan chart to associate with the Democrats or the Republicans? How do you all view the ideological positions offered by each of the two major parties? Does your own position on the Nolan chart lead you to easily affiliate with one of the two major parties?
Response from Liam:
The ideology quiz was pretty spot on. The only thing that I wasn’t a fan of was that they made me have an opinion on things that I don’t really know much – and thus don’t really care much – about. I don’t really use public libraries, so what do I care about whether or not a library in Alabama has a book on evolution or not
Response from Ayli:
While replying to some of the questions I already had a sense of what my results would be. I also noticed that for a majority of my answers, after reading the first statement I immediately strongly agreed with it, without bothering to read the second statement. Although I knew for a fact that my results would not show me as Conservative, they might’ve showed me as a Moderate however (my results said Liberal), since I not only supported government provision of social services and higher welfare, while keeping their hands of social morals and behaviors, but I also shared a conservative outlook with regards to governmental involvement in the economy and business regulation, where the less intervention in the economy the better.
Response from Brett
Modern politicians attempt to paint all issues as black and white, with themselves and their party on the correct side. For this reason, it is easy for modern voters to see which answers correspond with which political party or ideology. Still, the second test (Nolan Chart Survey) seems to do a better job of delving into the complexities of the issues, but a majority of the time it was still obvious which answer represented the “conservative” and “liberal” viewpoints. The first quiz’s (Typology Test) reliance on short answers caused the answers to be more transparent, meaning I could easily differentiate between “liberal” and “conservative”.
One interesting note is that the Nolan Chart Survey was developed by David Nolan, who in the 1970′s was instrumental in the creation of the Libertarian Party of the United States. This could have factored in his framing of the responses, but it is difficult to tell.
Response from Brooke:
I was actually a little surprised by my results on the quiz. It put me further on one side of the scale while I believe I’m more towards the center. Like Mike and Mary, I could tell which answers would give a certain result but I tried to ignore it. However, the results were still a bit incorrect. Then I took the quiz that Mary posted and my results better reflected my political ideology. I took a similar quiz last year to see where I fell on the Nolan Chart and I have almost identical results as last year’s. A lot has changed in the political climate over the past year but I don’t think that it’s had an effect on my beliefs.
