Word: surveyance
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...Gist: "New NEA Report Says Reading Is Up. And Hip," the Los Angeles Times proclaimed after the National Endowment for the Arts released its 2008 survey on the number of adult Americans who read literature (defined as any novel, short story, poem or play in print or online). For the first time since 1982, the survey reported a rise in the number of people who picked up a book or downloaded some prose - almost 16.6 million more since its 2002 census...
...what Americans are reading: The NEA's survey, which included more than 18,000 respondents, found that nearly 47% of all adults in the U.S. read a work of fiction not required for work or school in 2008, with the number of Americans who read a book growing by 3.5 million. (Of course, it should be noted that the general population has grown by 19 million since 2002, meaning that far more people in the U.S. opted not to read a book last year). A new question attempted to break the fiction genre down by subcategories - mystery, thriller, romance, science...
...Comparing then and now: In 2004, following the NEA's publication of Reading at Risk, a report on its 2002 survey that identified a downward trend in American literacy, critics attacked the agency for publicizing "alarming national survey results." Evidently the NEA views its latest report as a validation of its efforts. "Our belief, then and now, was that the first step towards solving a problem was to identify and understand it," the agency's chairman, Dana Gioia, says in the report's preface. One of the most significant areas of progress involves the reading habits of young adults (ages...
...causes of the rise: After hailing the results of its latest survey, the NEA's chairman asks the obvious follow-up: "What happened in the past six years to revitalize American literary reading?" His answer is disappointing: "There is no statistical answer to this question." Not one to let the absence of facts spoil a good story, Gioia then goes on to propose that perhaps the sheer volume of electronic entertainment and communication we're exposed to has created a backlash of sorts, prompting a reading renaissance. But as L.A. Times reporter Carolyn Kellogg points out, is it really accurate...
President Bush’s legacy, for all intents and purposes, may be sleeping with the fishes. In an unscientific survey of 109 historians, 61 percent of them ranked Bush the worst president in history—a number that undoubtedly would be higher if James Buchanan had mastered that whole leave-the-country-in-one-piece-when-you-exit-office thing. Furthermore, the populace outside the Ivory Tower seems to agree. Last December, a USA-Today Gallup poll indicated that 67 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush’s job as President, and a NBC-Wall Street Journal...