Ryerson Project Ryerson Project

Ryerson Project Item 2

I trust the federal government to act in the public interest.

American adults' average (mean) response was 3.21 on a scale of 0 (Disagree) to 10 (Agree). 967 responses have been collected (so far) from 2026-05-01 to 2026-08-28.

Descriptive Statistics

Mean3.21
Median3.00
Standard deviation2.72
N967
Standard error0.087

All-Time Distribution

Response 0: 236 Response 1: 85 Response 2: 104 Response 3: 132 Response 4: 107 Response 5: 99 Response 6: 70 Response 7: 58 Response 8: 39 Response 9: 19 Response 10: 18 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 236 Response value Count

Comparison to Other Items

Based on all-time mean agreement, this item ranks 121 out of 134 qualifying items and is at the 9.8 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 2026-05 response 0: 27.1% 2026-05 response 1: 7.5% 2026-05 response 2: 11.7% 2026-05 response 3: 12.0% 2026-05 response 4: 11.2% 2026-05 response 5: 9.2% 2026-05 response 6: 6.4% 2026-05 response 7: 7.3% 2026-05 response 8: 3.6% 2026-05 response 9: 2.0% 2026-05 response 10: 2.0% 2026-06 response 0: 22.4% 2026-06 response 1: 8.3% 2026-06 response 2: 11.3% 2026-06 response 3: 15.5% 2026-06 response 4: 11.0% 2026-06 response 5: 9.4% 2026-06 response 6: 8.0% 2026-06 response 7: 5.5% 2026-06 response 8: 5.2% 2026-06 response 9: 2.2% 2026-06 response 10: 1.1% 2026-07 response 0: 23.5% 2026-07 response 1: 12.0% 2026-07 response 2: 9.0% 2026-07 response 3: 15.1% 2026-07 response 4: 9.6% 2026-07 response 5: 11.4% 2026-07 response 6: 6.0% 2026-07 response 7: 5.4% 2026-07 response 8: 3.0% 2026-07 response 9: 1.8% 2026-07 response 10: 3.0% 2026-08 response 0: 23.5% 2026-08 response 1: 9.9% 2026-08 response 2: 7.4% 2026-08 response 3: 9.9% 2026-08 response 4: 13.6% 2026-08 response 5: 16.0% 2026-08 response 6: 9.9% 2026-08 response 7: 3.7% 2026-08 response 8: 2.5% 2026-08 response 9: 1.2% 2026-08 response 10: 2.5% May 2026 Jun 2026 Jul 2026 Aug 2026 Observation month Percent of responses Monthly mean

Observed Trend

Observations suggest unchanging agreement over the observed period, from 2026-05-01 to 2026-08-28. The estimated change over that period is 0.376 points on a 0 to 10 scale. Regression results place a 95% confidence interval around that observed-period change of [-0.327, 1.079].
Regression table

The daily slope annualized over 365.25 days is 1.154 points per year, with a 95% confidence interval of [-1.004, 3.311]. 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 
-3.4335 -2.4004 -0.2187  1.8192  6.9202 

Coefficients:
                 Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
(Intercept)      3.067146   0.159206  19.265   <2e-16 ***
days_since_start 0.003158   0.003010   1.049    0.294    
---
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Residual standard error: 2.716 on 965 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared:  0.00114,	Adjusted R-squared:  0.0001048 
F-statistic: 1.101 on 1 and 965 DF,  p-value: 0.2942