Ryerson Project Ryerson Project

Ryerson Project Item 9

I trust scientists to provide reliable information about important public issues.

American adults' average (mean) response was 6.94 on a scale of 0 (Disagree) to 10 (Agree). 1,048 responses have been collected (so far) from 2026-05-01 to 2026-09-17.

Descriptive Statistics

Mean6.94
Median8.00
Standard deviation2.44
N1,048
Standard error0.075

All-Time Distribution

Response 0: 23 Response 1: 16 Response 2: 34 Response 3: 43 Response 4: 46 Response 5: 88 Response 6: 114 Response 7: 157 Response 8: 228 Response 9: 157 Response 10: 142 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 228 Agreement (0 = maximum disagreement, 10 = maximum agreement) Count

Comparison to Other Items

Based on all-time mean agreement, this item ranks 48 out of 135 qualifying items and is at the 64.9 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: 1.6% 2026-05 response 1: 0.0% 2026-05 response 2: 2.3% 2026-05 response 3: 4.3% 2026-05 response 4: 2.3% 2026-05 response 5: 7.8% 2026-05 response 6: 8.6% 2026-05 response 7: 20.6% 2026-05 response 8: 22.6% 2026-05 response 9: 15.6% 2026-05 response 10: 14.4% 2026-06 response 0: 1.9% 2026-06 response 1: 1.9% 2026-06 response 2: 5.0% 2026-06 response 3: 5.4% 2026-06 response 4: 6.5% 2026-06 response 5: 9.2% 2026-06 response 6: 11.5% 2026-06 response 7: 13.8% 2026-06 response 8: 17.2% 2026-06 response 9: 15.3% 2026-06 response 10: 12.3% 2026-07 response 0: 3.9% 2026-07 response 1: 2.2% 2026-07 response 2: 2.8% 2026-07 response 3: 3.9% 2026-07 response 4: 2.2% 2026-07 response 5: 9.4% 2026-07 response 6: 12.2% 2026-07 response 7: 11.0% 2026-07 response 8: 24.9% 2026-07 response 9: 15.5% 2026-07 response 10: 12.2% 2026-08 response 0: 1.7% 2026-08 response 1: 2.8% 2026-08 response 2: 1.7% 2026-08 response 3: 2.8% 2026-08 response 4: 5.6% 2026-08 response 5: 7.3% 2026-08 response 6: 9.5% 2026-08 response 7: 14.5% 2026-08 response 8: 23.5% 2026-08 response 9: 14.5% 2026-08 response 10: 16.2% 2026-09 response 0: 2.4% 2026-09 response 1: 1.2% 2026-09 response 2: 4.1% 2026-09 response 3: 3.5% 2026-09 response 4: 5.3% 2026-09 response 5: 8.2% 2026-09 response 6: 13.5% 2026-09 response 7: 12.9% 2026-09 response 8: 22.4% 2026-09 response 9: 13.5% 2026-09 response 10: 12.9% 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 -0.166 points on a 0 to 10 scale. Regression results place a 95% confidence interval around that observed-period change of [-0.652, 0.319].
Regression table

The daily slope annualized over 365.25 days is -0.437 points per year, with a 95% confidence interval of [-1.713, 0.839]. 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 
-7.0055 -1.0034  0.9759  2.0079  3.1416 

Coefficients:
                  Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
(Intercept)       7.024686   0.142182  49.406   <2e-16 ***
days_since_start -0.001197   0.001780  -0.672    0.502    
---
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Residual standard error: 2.444 on 1046 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared:  0.0004318,	Adjusted R-squared:  -0.0005238 
F-statistic: 0.4518 on 1 and 1046 DF,  p-value: 0.5016