Ryerson Project Ryerson Project

Ryerson Project Item 3

I believe most people can be trusted.

American adults' average (mean) response was 4.86 on a scale of 0 (Disagree) to 10 (Agree). 1,023 responses have been collected (so far) from 2026-05-01 to 2026-09-17.

Descriptive Statistics

Mean4.86
Median5.00
Standard deviation2.39
N1,023
Standard error0.075

All-Time Distribution

Response 0: 67 Response 1: 38 Response 2: 72 Response 3: 104 Response 4: 120 Response 5: 201 Response 6: 159 Response 7: 131 Response 8: 77 Response 9: 37 Response 10: 17 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 201 Agreement (0 = maximum disagreement, 10 = maximum agreement) Count

Comparison to Other Items

Based on all-time mean agreement, this item ranks 100 out of 135 qualifying items and is at the 26.1 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: 6.7% 2026-05 response 1: 2.8% 2026-05 response 2: 7.2% 2026-05 response 3: 9.2% 2026-05 response 4: 11.7% 2026-05 response 5: 20.3% 2026-05 response 6: 15.8% 2026-05 response 7: 13.9% 2026-05 response 8: 6.9% 2026-05 response 9: 3.9% 2026-05 response 10: 1.7% 2026-06 response 0: 5.0% 2026-06 response 1: 3.6% 2026-06 response 2: 7.7% 2026-06 response 3: 13.3% 2026-06 response 4: 10.2% 2026-06 response 5: 19.6% 2026-06 response 6: 18.0% 2026-06 response 7: 10.5% 2026-06 response 8: 8.0% 2026-06 response 9: 2.8% 2026-06 response 10: 1.4% 2026-07 response 0: 9.0% 2026-07 response 1: 4.5% 2026-07 response 2: 7.9% 2026-07 response 3: 10.1% 2026-07 response 4: 14.6% 2026-07 response 5: 16.9% 2026-07 response 6: 11.2% 2026-07 response 7: 19.1% 2026-07 response 8: 4.5% 2026-07 response 9: 2.2% 2026-07 response 10: 0.0% 2026-08 response 0: 9.0% 2026-08 response 1: 3.5% 2026-08 response 2: 4.9% 2026-08 response 3: 4.9% 2026-08 response 4: 13.2% 2026-08 response 5: 21.5% 2026-08 response 6: 13.2% 2026-08 response 7: 13.2% 2026-08 response 8: 9.0% 2026-08 response 9: 6.2% 2026-08 response 10: 1.4% 2026-09 response 0: 5.9% 2026-09 response 1: 8.8% 2026-09 response 2: 5.9% 2026-09 response 3: 10.3% 2026-09 response 4: 13.2% 2026-09 response 5: 16.2% 2026-09 response 6: 11.8% 2026-09 response 7: 10.3% 2026-09 response 8: 8.8% 2026-09 response 9: 2.9% 2026-09 response 10: 5.9% May 2026 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 2026-05-01 to 2026-09-17. The estimated change over that period is -0.066 points on a 0 to 10 scale. Regression results place a 95% confidence interval around that observed-period change of [-0.595, 0.463].
Regression table

The daily slope annualized over 365.25 days is -0.173 points per year, with a 95% confidence interval of [-1.563, 1.216]. 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 
-4.8816 -1.8538  0.1393  2.1191  5.1834 

Coefficients:
                   Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
(Intercept)       4.8820524  0.1259015  38.777   <2e-16 ***
days_since_start -0.0004741  0.0019386  -0.245    0.807    
---
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Residual standard error: 2.391 on 1021 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared:  5.856e-05,	Adjusted R-squared:  -0.0009208 
F-statistic: 0.05979 on 1 and 1021 DF,  p-value: 0.8069