Most Americans feel confident tackling common life tasks—from cleaning a wound to calculating a tip—but fewer are sure they could fix a car engine or read a weather map, a new Pew Research Center survey finds.
The survey asked Americans how confident they were in their ability to complete 12 different tasks, from everyday household chores to more technical challenges.
Methodology:
Pew Research Center ran this survey to see how confident Americans feel about doing certain practical tasks. The survey included 5,085 adults in the U.S. and was conducted from April 28 to May 4, 2025.
Everyone who took part is part of the Center’s American Trends Panel, a group of people chosen through a random national sample of home addresses. This method ensures that nearly all U.S. adults have a chance to be included. Participants completed the survey online or by phone with a live interviewer. The results were adjusted to reflect the U.S. population by gender, race, politics, education, and other factors.
By the numbers:
Most Americans feel confident doing everyday tasks—especially those related to health, food, and home life.
Nearly all adults (94%) say they could clean and care for a wound, and 88% say they can read and understand nutrition labels. About eight in ten say they know what yeast does when baking bread (83%) or could grow a vegetable garden (83%).
Confidence is also high for common household chores. Ninety-five percent say they can remove a stain from clothing, 76% say they know which cleaning chemicals not to mix, and 69% say they can weatherproof doors and windows.
Many Americans also say they could handle basic problem-solving and navigation tasks—like reading charts and tables in a news story (87%), calculating a tip in their head (86%), or using a compass (76%).
But confidence drops when it comes to more technical skills. Fewer than half of adults say they could explain a high-pressure system on a weather map (39%) or fix a car engine problem (29%).
Confidence depends on various factors
Dig deeper:
According to the survey, education, gender, and age all shape how confident Americans feel about practical skills.
Those with more education are more confident in handling numbers and doing math in their heads, while those without a college degree are more likely to say they could fix a car engine.
Men tend to express higher confidence than women in technical tasks—especially fixing a car (45% vs. 14%), using a compass (86% vs. 66%), and weatherproofing a home (78% vs. 60%). However, men and women show similar confidence in tasks like reading nutrition labels or calculating a tip.
Younger adults are generally less confident than older Americans. Just over half of those under 30 say they could weatherproof doors and windows, compared with much higher shares among older adults. Likewise, 77% of young adults say they can calculate a tip in their head, compared with about 90% of those 50 and older.
The Source: The information in this story comes from a Pew Research Center survey conducted from April 28 to May 4, 2025, among 5,085 U.S. adults. Participants were part of the Center’s American Trends Panel, a nationally representative group selected through random sampling of residential addresses. This story was reported from Los Angeles.