Really, I don’t particularly care where Portland is in this annual study ranking the literacy of cities. But I do care (mildly, anyway) about how such studies are conducted. And while I haven’t yet gone through it methodically, the basis upon which it made its rankings for Internet resources make me question its methodology.
The last two elements on the list are “Number of unique visitors per capita to a city’s internet version newspaper” and “Number of webpage views per capita to a city’s internet version newspaper”. (No mention of any other Internet content as a criteria for literacy.)
As any literate Oregonian knows, traffic to OregonLive could hardly be considered a proper gauge of Portland’s literacy. So, we know at least one category in this study has an entirely faulty construction.
Anyone spot any similar problems with the other categories?
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