Ryerson Project Ryerson Project

Ryerson Project Item 138

I believe the future will be better than the present.

American adults' average (mean) response was 5.32 on a scale of 0 (Disagree) to 10 (Agree). 435 responses have been collected (so far) from 2026-06-30 to 2026-10-27.

Descriptive Statistics

Mean5.32
Median5.00
Standard deviation2.62
N435
Standard error0.125

All-Time Distribution

Response 0: 29 Response 1: 11 Response 2: 28 Response 3: 29 Response 4: 37 Response 5: 110 Response 6: 46 Response 7: 53 Response 8: 43 Response 9: 18 Response 10: 31 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 110 Agreement (0 = maximum disagreement, 10 = maximum agreement) Count

Comparison to Other Items

Based on all-time mean agreement, this item ranks 88 out of 142 qualifying items and is at the 38.3 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: 7.5% 2026-09 response 1: 1.5% 2026-09 response 2: 9.0% 2026-09 response 3: 10.4% 2026-09 response 4: 7.5% 2026-09 response 5: 32.8% 2026-09 response 6: 7.5% 2026-09 response 7: 11.9% 2026-09 response 8: 6.0% 2026-09 response 9: 1.5% 2026-09 response 10: 4.5% 2026-10 response 0: 9.6% 2026-10 response 1: 2.1% 2026-10 response 2: 7.5% 2026-10 response 3: 5.5% 2026-10 response 4: 5.5% 2026-10 response 5: 22.6% 2026-10 response 6: 12.3% 2026-10 response 7: 12.3% 2026-10 response 8: 13.0% 2026-10 response 9: 4.1% 2026-10 response 10: 5.5% Jun 2026 Jul 2026 Aug 2026 Sep 2026 Oct 2026 Observation month Percent of responses Monthly mean

Observed Trend

Observations suggest unchanging agreement over the observed period, from 2026-06-30 to 2026-10-27. The estimated change over that period is -0.633 points on a 0 to 10 scale. Regression results place a 95% confidence interval around that observed-period change of [-1.364, 0.097].
Regression table

The daily slope annualized over 365.25 days is -1.943 points per year, with a 95% confidence interval of [-4.186, 0.299]. 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 
-5.610 -1.575 -0.115  1.858  4.976 

Coefficients:
                  Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
(Intercept)       5.647004   0.228269  24.738   <2e-16 ***
days_since_start -0.005320   0.003124  -1.703   0.0893 .  
---
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Residual standard error: 2.61 on 433 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared:  0.006655,	Adjusted R-squared:  0.004361 
F-statistic: 2.901 on 1 and 433 DF,  p-value: 0.08925