Ryerson Project Ryerson Project

Ryerson Project Item 35

I believe universities are a positive force in society.

American adults' average (mean) response was 7.19 on a scale of 0 (Disagree) to 10 (Agree). 413 responses have been collected (so far) from 2026-05-01 to 2026-08-28.

Descriptive Statistics

Mean7.19
Median8.00
Standard deviation2.34
N413
Standard error0.115

All-Time Distribution

Response 0: 8 Response 1: 4 Response 2: 8 Response 3: 15 Response 4: 13 Response 5: 37 Response 6: 49 Response 7: 63 Response 8: 85 Response 9: 57 Response 10: 74 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 85 Response value Count

Comparison to Other Items

Based on all-time mean agreement, this item ranks 41 out of 134 qualifying items and is at the 69.9 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: 0.9% 2026-05 response 1: 0.9% 2026-05 response 2: 0.0% 2026-05 response 3: 0.9% 2026-05 response 4: 4.5% 2026-05 response 5: 11.8% 2026-05 response 6: 15.5% 2026-05 response 7: 14.5% 2026-05 response 8: 19.1% 2026-05 response 9: 14.5% 2026-05 response 10: 17.3% 2026-06 response 0: 2.1% 2026-06 response 1: 1.4% 2026-06 response 2: 3.6% 2026-06 response 3: 4.3% 2026-06 response 4: 2.1% 2026-06 response 5: 7.1% 2026-06 response 6: 9.3% 2026-06 response 7: 15.7% 2026-06 response 8: 20.0% 2026-06 response 9: 13.6% 2026-06 response 10: 20.7% 2026-07 response 0: 3.1% 2026-07 response 1: 1.0% 2026-07 response 2: 2.1% 2026-07 response 3: 5.2% 2026-07 response 4: 4.2% 2026-07 response 5: 9.4% 2026-07 response 6: 14.6% 2026-07 response 7: 15.6% 2026-07 response 8: 17.7% 2026-07 response 9: 14.6% 2026-07 response 10: 12.5% 2026-08 response 0: 1.5% 2026-08 response 1: 0.0% 2026-08 response 2: 1.5% 2026-08 response 3: 4.5% 2026-08 response 4: 1.5% 2026-08 response 5: 7.5% 2026-08 response 6: 7.5% 2026-08 response 7: 14.9% 2026-08 response 8: 28.4% 2026-08 response 9: 11.9% 2026-08 response 10: 20.9% 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 0.082 points on a 0 to 10 scale. Regression results place a 95% confidence interval around that observed-period change of [-0.763, 0.926].
Regression table

The daily slope annualized over 365.25 days is 0.251 points per year, with a 95% confidence interval of [-2.341, 2.842]. 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 
-7.2222 -1.1988  0.7717  1.8101  2.8464 

Coefficients:
                 Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
(Intercept)      7.153552   0.229520   31.17   <2e-16 ***
days_since_start 0.000686   0.003609    0.19    0.849    
---
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Residual standard error: 2.342 on 411 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared:  8.79e-05,	Adjusted R-squared:  -0.002345 
F-statistic: 0.03613 on 1 and 411 DF,  p-value: 0.8493