This site provides an analysis of the use of and critical engagement with statistics in national newspapers. Articles are from RSS feeds of national newspapers, primarily based on – but not limited to – the global news aggregator Google News.
The Synthesis Report of the UN Secretary-General on the Post-2015 Agenda “The Road to Dignity by 2030” called for a transformative agenda where we “base our analysis in credible data and evidence, enhancing data capacity, availability, disaggregation, literacy and sharing”. He stressed that “the world must acquire a new data literacy in order to be equipped with the tools, methodologies, capacities, and information necessary to shine a light on the challenges of responding to the new agenda”.
According to the Oxford Dictionary of Statistical Terms, statistics is “the study of the collection, analysis, interpretation, presentation, and organization of data” (Dodge, 2003). Data literacy, as called for in the Synthesis Report, can therefore be seen as a component of statistical literacy.
The conceptual framework is adapted from the statistical literacy construct in Watson and Callingham (2003). Their construct involves six levels, of which we consider the top three levels as characterised below in increasing order of complexity.
Level 1. Consistent, non-critical: Appropriate but non-critical engagement with context, multiple aspects of terminology usage.
Level 2. Critical: Critical, questioning engagement in contexts that do not involve proportional reasoning, but which do involve appropriate use of terminology.
Level 3. Critical mathematical: Critical, questioning engagement with context, using proportional reasoning particularly in chance contexts, showing appreciation of the need for uncertainty in making predictions, and interpreting subtle aspects of language.
To measure statistical literacy empirically, we turn to national newspaper articles that are accessible online. This is essentially for three reasons.
The methodology classifies articles into literacy levels 1 to 3 based on three corresponding keyword lists. For each of the three levels, we obtain the share of documents that match the classification. An overall measure for statistical literacy is then obtained as the sum over the three shares.
To establish the validity of the measure, the classification of articles will be validated by analysts at National Statistical Offices.
This site currently covers news articles for about half of the 77 International Development Association (IDA) borrowing countries written in four languages (English, French, Portuguese, Spanish). Four OECD countries – France, Mexico, Portugal, U.K. – where these languages spoken are included for reference.
Starting from 15 April 2016, a total of 8880 articles were analysed for the use of statistics in general news (Level 1). This corresponds to an average of 261 articles per country for the period until 16 June 2016.
For Level 2 and 3, a total of 3067 articles with explicit reference to ‘statistics’, ‘data’, ‘study’, ‘research’ or ‘report’ were analysed, starting from 22 December.
For each of the three levels of statistical literacy, the resulting score gives the percentage of articles that contain at least one search term from the keyword lists defined further below. The score for each level thus ranges between 0 and 100 and the maximum total score over all three levels is 300.
The results are presented by language groups to allow for a direct comparison between countries for which the same keyword list was applied.
The 452 general news articles that cite statistics (Level 1) are listed in the table below. They correspond to 5.09 percent of all articles. The subsequent table lists the 1094 research-related articles (equivalent to 12.32 percent of all articles) that demonstrate a critical engagement with statistics (Level 2 and 3).
Data source: Daily, top 100 news articles from Google News for publishers who
Keywords: articles are considered a good fit for this category if they contain words from one of the following lists
Data source: Daily, top 100 news articles from a Google News search for either: ‘statistics’, ‘data’, ‘study’, ‘research’, ‘report’. For publishers who
Keywords: articles are considered a good fit for this category if they contain words from one of the following lists