POLITICAL IDEOLOGY ASSIGNMENT

This assignment is designed to help students identify or validate their personal political beliefs.  Students will complete two online political ideology quizzes and analyze the results. 

This assignment is worth 50 points.  5 points will be deleted from the earned score for each calendar day the assignment is late.  Assignments must be uploaded through the course home.  Emailed assignments will not be accepted. 

PLEASE NOTE:  Some in the class may not be old enough to be a registered voter or may have never voted.  If this is the case, please respond to questions in terms of your perception of your future voting behavior.  Also, please do not think too deeply about the questions in the various surveys.  Just go with your initial response.

For each online quiz you complete, please jot down or make a mental note concerning the format of the quiz and the types of questions and answer choices that were available to you.  You will need to include this information in your overall analysis.

Your completed assignment will be an essay that includes the information requested below.  The questions listed below each ideology quiz ARE NOT individual questions to be answered in separate sentences or sentence fragments.  They are intended to be a guideline or outline for concepts that should be included in your essay.  Responses that are not written in a paragraph format will receive a grade of zero.

Minimum length requirement = 300 words

The Political Typology Quiz 

http://www.people-press.org/quiz/political-typology/

Use the following questions to shape your written analysis. 

1. Into which typology category did the survey place you?
2. According to these results, what is the basic description of your political typology?
3. Explain whether or not this test gave an accurate portrayal of your political ideology. Be more specific than a simple yes or no response.  Explain why you agree or disagree with this classification of your ideology.

The Political Compass

https://www.politicalcompass.org/

1. What is your Economic Left / Right score?
2. What is your Social Libertarian / Authoritarian score?
3. Identify the quadrant in which this test places your political beliefs.
4. Scroll up to almost the top of the page and locate the “Elections” link on the menu of the left side of your computer screen.  Choose “USA”. 
5. Carefully study the chart that plots the U. S. Presidential candidates for
6.   Identify the presidential candidate that is closest to your beliefs, as defined by this quiz.  Do you agree or disagree with this analysis of  who you support among the candidates running for office this year?  Explain.

Overall Conclusions

1. Looking back at both of the quizzes you completed, did they produce similar results in terms of identifying your political ideology? (In other words, did both quizzes consistently identify you as being conservative, liberal, etc.?)   
2. Were these scores comparable to where you thought you stood regarding your political ideology?
3. Which of the quizzes did you like the most or think was most beneficial to understanding your own political ideology?  
4. Which of the quizzes was the most off-base in terms of identifying your political ideology?
5. In your opinion, what shortcomings exist in any of these tests? Explain completely.  Discuss how you would improve any of all of these tests.