Generation gap and poor reporting

I followed this link hoping to gain a little insight on how my generation's views and values differ from older Americans. What I found was a very disappointing article that sent me searching for the original poll. Maybe I've become too accustomed to Nate Silver's statistical analysis and reporting, but this AP article (via MSNBC) seemed almost entirely useless.

In order to support the argument that there is a generation gap, the first number from the poll that the article mentions is, "Almost eight in 10 people believe there is a major difference in the point of view of younger people and older people today." I hate to have to make such an obvious point, but people saying that there is a generation gap is not the same thing as showing that there is a generation gap. Moving along, the article next mentions which factors account for the perceived gap, instead of reporting what people actually said about their values.

Finally the fifth paragraph mentions a difference in values that the poll actually measured, on the importance of religion in people's lives.

The rest of the article continues to be a muddle, with very few actual numbers from the poll, and a lot of discussion about aging, quality of life, leisure time, and use of technology. Overall the article fails to deliver on explaining how "Older, younger people differ most on social values, morality," which was why I started reading it to begin with.

Also, last night while I was reading this I remember two sentences that were particularly poorly constructed, one about the '60s counterculture and one about older people's complaints about younger people's work ethic. Someone must have agreed with me because while I'm looking at it today, those sentences have been trimmed down considerably and now make a lot more sense.

On the topic of older people complaining about the younger generation's work ethic and sense of entitlement: it simply isn't true that young people are lazier or have a weaker work ethic than older people did. What has happened is that over the years, the nature of work has changed, and the difficulties and challenges involved in surviving and being successful have changed. Don't assume that, just because things are different and we don't face the same challenges that you did, that we don't have the same work ethic. That's lazy thinking.

Anyway, having failed to gain any understanding from this article, I moved on to the poll itself. You can find it here (PDF) if you like. The 91-page report centers almost exclusively on the topics of marriage and parenthood, which you wouldn't have known from the AP article. Before I dip into the topics here, I'd like to point out that 'values' spans many issues aside from marriage, sex, and parenthood. Why didn't this poll cover values like social justice, education or the environment?

Aside from covering only a narrow range of values, the Pew Report was an interesting, if fairly dry, read at 91 pages. I highlighted the most interesting graph above, showing how single parenthood and approval of unmarried childbearing drops off considerably as people get older. Out of all the data that purported to show a generational gap in values, these were the clearest, the biggest difference. Other charts didn't have as much resolution because they only divided respondents into only four age categories, or even two.