Americans Overestimate Sexual Minorities And Other Groups
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – With U.S. media covering discrimination extensively, Americans may be forgiven for “rarely” getting it right when estimating demographic groups, a survey suggests.
YouGov, an internet market research and data analytics firm, said when “people’s average perceptions of group sizes are compared to actual population estimates, an intriguing pattern emerges: Americans tend to overestimate the size of minority groups vastly.”
YouGov added that this perception “holds for sexual minorities, including the proportion of gays and lesbians (estimate: 30 percent, actual: 3
percent).
Those also questioned estimated bisexuals as 29 percent of the U.S. population while the truth is 4 percent. Those being transgender were estimated at 21 percent, while the truth is 0.6 percent.
“It also applies to religious minorities, such as Muslim Americans (estimate: 27 percent, true: 1 percent and Jewish Americans (estimate: 30 percent, true: 2%).
“And we find the same sorts of overestimates for racial and ethnic minorities, such as Native Americans estimate: 27 percent, true: 1 percent).”
Others include Asian Americans (estimate: 29 percent true: 6 percent) and Black Americans (estimate: 41 percent true: 12 percent), the group stressed.
“When it comes to estimating the size of demographic groups, Americans rarely get it right,” YouGov concluded.
It asked some 1,000 respondents in January to guess the percentage of minority groups of American adults who are members of 43 different groups.
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