I was taking the Political Compass Test, and I noticed something interesting... there's no "neutral" option for answers, which is bad because some of these questions seem to be biased, particularly toward libertarianism. What I mean is, I seem to be forced into appearing to disagree with a statement that is actually a far more complicated issue than is presented to me. (Skip down to the bottom of this post if you want the smoking gun.)
Here are some examples of question bias:
So now, the ultimate challenge: I "strongly disagreed" with literally everything on the list and ran the score. The results were way into libertarianism, though on the line between left and right. They did manage to balance the left/right scale, but they were not at all balanced on the libertarian/authoritarian scale. A well-written test will score perfectly center if the questions are all answered the same. This test was clearly written in such a way as to make people squeemish about agreeing with the statements, thus allowing them to nudge their own score into libertarian territory.
In short, the Political Compass Test is a recruiting tool for an underdog political agenda, and is not to be taken seriously.
Tags: Libertiarian, Political Compass, bias, propaganda
Permalink Reply by annet on August 29, 2011 at 10:33am
Permalink Reply by Rob van Senten on August 29, 2011 at 12:21pm You are completely right for as far as I can see The Nerd.
I've done the test and I came out on the extreme left and libertarian side. I would have never guessed, even if I look back on the answers that I have given, several of my answers are completely opposite of what libertarianism stands for.
That is so cool that you caught that!
Have you taken a class on how to write tests?
I remember in one of my classes we had to write a Likert Scale test. It was harder than it looked.
Anyway, thanks for the heads up on that Political Compass Test.
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