Politics · Advice & Questions · Oct 17

A politics quiz changed my top match after one answer. Is the result useful?

Politics

I went back one page, changed my answer from "unsure" to "somewhat agree," and a different party appeared at the top.

The online quiz asks about a mixture of public spending, institutions and social questions. It gives me a "strong match" label, but I can't find a clear explanation of how it weights the questions or turns party positions into scores. I haven't checked which version of the parties' positions it uses.

A friend thinks the result reveals what I really believe. Another says these tools are useless. I'm somewhere in between: several questions made me notice issues I'd never thought through, but the final label feels more definite than my answers.

How would you use a result like this without handing the quiz the decision? Is it worth keeping the questions and putting the party ranking aside until I understand how it was produced?

Discussion

2 community replies

@softfocus

Keep the question that surprised you. The ranking doesn't have to be the useful part. You can ask yourself why you changed that particular answer and what information you still need, without treating a moving label as an instruction about your political identity.

@JulesAfterDark

Look for the scoring explanation, date and sources for the party positions. If those aren't available, say you can't assess the result's basis. That is a specific limitation. It doesn't require a claim that every quiz is worthless or that this one was designed to deceive you.

A politics quiz changed my top match after one answer. Is the result useful?

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