Ryerson Project Ryerson Project

Ryerson Project Item 147

I often feel helpless in dealing with the problems of life.

American adults' average (mean) response was 4.31 on a scale of 0 (Disagree) to 10 (Agree). 106 responses have been collected (so far) from 2026-08-27 to 2026-10-21.

Descriptive Statistics

Mean4.31
Median4.00
Standard deviation3.25
N106
Standard error0.316

All-Time Distribution

Response 0: 19 Response 1: 6 Response 2: 14 Response 3: 12 Response 4: 5 Response 5: 7 Response 6: 11 Response 7: 12 Response 8: 6 Response 9: 6 Response 10: 8 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 19 Agreement (0 = maximum disagreement, 10 = maximum agreement) Count

Comparison to Other Items

Based on all-time mean agreement, this item ranks 112 out of 141 qualifying items and is at the 20.7 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 2026-08 response 0: 0.0% 2026-08 response 1: 16.7% 2026-08 response 2: 33.3% 2026-08 response 3: 0.0% 2026-08 response 4: 16.7% 2026-08 response 5: 16.7% 2026-08 response 6: 0.0% 2026-08 response 7: 0.0% 2026-08 response 8: 0.0% 2026-08 response 9: 16.7% 2026-08 response 10: 0.0% 2026-09 response 0: 20.0% 2026-09 response 1: 5.5% 2026-09 response 2: 14.5% 2026-09 response 3: 12.7% 2026-09 response 4: 1.8% 2026-09 response 5: 10.9% 2026-09 response 6: 7.3% 2026-09 response 7: 16.4% 2026-09 response 8: 0.0% 2026-09 response 9: 1.8% 2026-09 response 10: 9.1% 2026-10 response 0: 17.8% 2026-10 response 1: 4.4% 2026-10 response 2: 8.9% 2026-10 response 3: 11.1% 2026-10 response 4: 6.7% 2026-10 response 5: 0.0% 2026-10 response 6: 15.6% 2026-10 response 7: 6.7% 2026-10 response 8: 13.3% 2026-10 response 9: 8.9% 2026-10 response 10: 6.7% Aug 2026 Sep 2026 Oct 2026 Observation month Percent of responses Monthly mean

Observed Trend

Observations suggest unchanging agreement over the observed period, from 2026-08-27 to 2026-10-21. The estimated change over that period is 1.055 points on a 0 to 10 scale. Regression results place a 95% confidence interval around that observed-period change of [-1.170, 3.281].
Regression table

The daily slope annualized over 365.25 days is 7.009 points per year, with a 95% confidence interval of [-7.769, 21.787]. 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 
-4.7418 -2.5116 -0.5116  2.8291  6.1409 

Coefficients:
                 Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
(Intercept)       3.70556    0.71729   5.166 1.16e-06 ***
days_since_start  0.01919    0.02040   0.941    0.349    
---
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Residual standard error: 3.251 on 104 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared:  0.008435,	Adjusted R-squared:  -0.0011 
F-statistic: 0.8847 on 1 and 104 DF,  p-value: 0.3491