Which Americans think that Human and Civil Rights are Respected in the US?

My colleagues and I did a survey of 3,000 US adults in 2018, and analyzed the results with input from two NGOs, Human Rights Watch and the Center for Victims of Torture.

We found that Americans view their country’s human rights conditions in starkly different terms (no surprises here!). Some see a country wracked by human and civil rights violations, while others see a country where conditions are more or less satisfactory.

We published the results in Open Global Rights, a website that I helped create in 2013, and that now is widely read by human rights professionals, funders, and scholars. You can read the article in Spanish too, if you like.

There are two take-home points: One, Republicans think the country’s human and civil rights conditions are pretty good, while Democrats think the opposite. Second, those beliefs are strongly correlated with other views about politics and policy, including items that have little to do with human and civil rights.

This means that views towards civil and human rights are packaged up with views about all kinds of other things, and that the uber-packaging is partisan political affiliation.

If you’d like to read more about my research, please check out www.jamesron.com. A few colleagues and I have started a research consulting firm, Azimuth Social Research, which offers both qualitative and quantitative research solutions for the private, public, and non profit sectors.