Ryerson Project Ryerson Project

Ryerson Project Item 138

I believe the future will be better than the present.

American adults' average (mean) response was 5.51 on a scale of 0 (Disagree) to 10 (Agree). 256 responses have been collected (so far) from 2026-06-30 to 2026-09-17.

Descriptive Statistics

Mean5.51
Median5.00
Standard deviation2.54
N256
Standard error0.159

All-Time Distribution

Response 0: 12 Response 1: 7 Response 2: 12 Response 3: 17 Response 4: 26 Response 5: 68 Response 6: 26 Response 7: 31 Response 8: 23 Response 9: 12 Response 10: 22 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 68 Agreement (0 = maximum disagreement, 10 = maximum agreement) Count

Comparison to Other Items

Based on all-time mean agreement, this item ranks 81 out of 135 qualifying items and is at the 40.3 percentile.

Qualifying items have 100 or more total observations. Higher means indicate more agreement and therefore a higher rank.

Monthly Trend

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0% 50% 100% 0 5 10 2026-06 response 0: 0.0% 2026-06 response 1: 0.0% 2026-06 response 2: 0.0% 2026-06 response 3: 0.0% 2026-06 response 4: 0.0% 2026-06 response 5: 0.0% 2026-06 response 6: 0.0% 2026-06 response 7: 0.0% 2026-06 response 8: 100.0% 2026-06 response 9: 0.0% 2026-06 response 10: 0.0% 2026-07 response 0: 4.2% 2026-07 response 1: 2.8% 2026-07 response 2: 2.8% 2026-07 response 3: 5.6% 2026-07 response 4: 11.3% 2026-07 response 5: 25.4% 2026-07 response 6: 10.6% 2026-07 response 7: 12.7% 2026-07 response 8: 9.2% 2026-07 response 9: 6.3% 2026-07 response 10: 9.2% 2026-08 response 0: 5.1% 2026-08 response 1: 3.8% 2026-08 response 2: 8.9% 2026-08 response 3: 7.6% 2026-08 response 4: 10.1% 2026-08 response 5: 24.1% 2026-08 response 6: 10.1% 2026-08 response 7: 11.4% 2026-08 response 8: 7.6% 2026-08 response 9: 2.5% 2026-08 response 10: 8.9% 2026-09 response 0: 5.9% 2026-09 response 1: 0.0% 2026-09 response 2: 2.9% 2026-09 response 3: 8.8% 2026-09 response 4: 5.9% 2026-09 response 5: 38.2% 2026-09 response 6: 8.8% 2026-09 response 7: 11.8% 2026-09 response 8: 8.8% 2026-09 response 9: 2.9% 2026-09 response 10: 5.9% Jun 2026 Jul 2026 Aug 2026 Sep 2026 Observation month Percent of responses Monthly mean

Observed Trend

Observations suggest unchanging agreement over the observed period, from 2026-06-30 to 2026-09-17. The estimated change over that period is -0.546 points on a 0 to 10 scale. Regression results place a 95% confidence interval around that observed-period change of [-1.612, 0.520].
Regression table

The daily slope annualized over 365.25 days is -2.525 points per year, with a 95% confidence interval of [-7.451, 2.402]. This short-window annualized number is provided for reference, but the observed-period change above is the primary trend estimate.

Call:
lm(formula = response_value ~ days_since_start, data = model_data)

Residuals:
    Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
-5.6822 -1.5008 -0.3194  1.6530  4.8154 

Coefficients:
                  Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
(Intercept)       5.730633   0.268826  21.317   <2e-16 ***
days_since_start -0.006912   0.006849  -1.009    0.314    
---
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Residual standard error: 2.541 on 254 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared:  0.003994,	Adjusted R-squared:  7.233e-05 
F-statistic: 1.018 on 1 and 254 DF,  p-value: 0.3138