New Zealanders like to think of themselves as an uncomplicated lot. So straightforward, in fact, that successful completion of a short test can determine one’s fitness to become a Kiwi.

At least, that’s the plan from Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke Van Velden, who has announced that from late 2027 part of the process of becoming a New Zealand citizen will entail scoring at least 75% in a 20-question multiple-choice test.

At one level, this makes sense. If someone wishes to become a citizen of New Zealand, it seems reasonable to expect them to know something of the place. (The same might be said of people who are already New Zealanders, but the test will apply only to aspiring citizens.)

On closer inspection, however, the proposed test raises questions that deserve close attention – particularly regarding methodology.

For the results of any test to be valid, the assessment method needs to be appropriate to the purpose of the exercise, which has to be carefully designed into the test questions themselves.

In other words, exactly what are we testing for? Van Velden has indicated the government is concerned “we have lost a sense of what it means to be a New Zealander”.

Accordingly, budding Kiwis will be quizzed on their comprehension of a range of topics including the contents of the Bill of Rights Act, human rights, voting rights and democratic principles, and New Zealand’s system of government.

Some of these lend themselves to precise, accurate responses. New Zealanders’ democratic and civil rights are, for instance, explicitly articulated in the Bill of Rights Act.

But designing a limited series of potential responses for complex, contested issues such as the nature of freedom of speech or respect for human rights poses any number of challenges.

Unintended effects

Like referendums, multiple-choice tests can unhelpfully reduce complex concepts to short, simple (if not simplistic) propositions. It is difficult to meaningfully assess someone’s appreciation of these intricate matters simply by requiring them to choose one option.

International research on the value of citizenship tests is not reassuring. There is some evidence people retain a limited amount of factual information for a short time following a test, but little indication preparing for and taking a test produces meaningful behavioural change.

On top of that, when the broader political and policy context is hostile to migrants (as is increasingly the case in New Zealand), such tests can produce the opposite of what is intended.

Research in the United Kingdom, for instance, has found some new citizens feel less connected with their new home having taken a test, perhaps out of anxiety or confusion about its relevance to their daily lives.

In short, learning about a host country may be useful in the short run, but rote learning to pass a multiple-choice test does not have meaningful, durable effects.

Historical amnesia?

Beyond those technical considerations lie questions about the actual resources available to people preparing to take the test, and the subtantive nature of the questions they will be asked.

Both will send clear signals about what it means to be a New Zealander. This takes on greater significance in the context of the current government’s rollback of Māori and Treaty of Waitangi influence in law and policy.

We might expect a citizenship test to include questions about the country’s constitutional arrangements. But Van Velden made no reference to te Tiriti o Waitangi when setting out the broad areas for inclusion in the test.

When Australia toughened its citizenship regime nearly a decade ago, Indigenous understandings of citizenship didn’t feature in a test about “Australian values”. The British test has been criticised for ignoring the legacy of imperialism in its former colonies.

What does not feature in the New Zealand citizenship test will matter every bit as much as what does. The risk is that it becomes an exercise in selective historical amnesia at the expense of an honest, comprehensive profile of the country.

“What it means to be a New Zealander” is no easy thing to define, let alone distil into a questionnaire that captures the country’s sense of itself. On the other hand, a simplified and partial version of national identity might be easier to convey in a short, multiple-choice test.

Richard Shaw does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Four percent of Americans – roughly 12 million people – believe that “lizard people” secretly control the Earth. At least, that was the finding of an infamous 2013 public opinion survey.

Do so many people really believe such outlandish claims? Or do results like these partly reflect people giving silly answers or deliberately skewing surveys for fun?

US psychiatrist Alexander Scott believes the latter plays a significant role.

Using the survey as an example, he coined the term “the Lizardman constant” to describe the idea that a certain amount of noise and trolling will always exist in surveys about unusual beliefs.

As Scott warned: “Any possible source of noise – jokesters, cognitive biases, or deliberate misbehaviour – can easily overwhelm the signal.”

As researchers who study uncommon beliefs such as conspiracy theories, we wanted to investigate how this kind of cheeky trolling can muddy the waters.

Trolls and true believers

Building on earlier Australian research, we surveyed New Zealanders to test how common dishonest or joking responses were in conspiracy theory surveys.

We did this in two ways. First, we directly asked people a yes/no question at the end of the survey:

“Did you respond insincerely at any earlier point in this survey? In other words, did you give any responses that were actually just joking, trolling, or otherwise not indicating what you really think?”

Second, we included in the survey a “conspiracy theory” so ridiculous we could assume most, if not all, people who said they believed it were taking the mickey.

We asked them if they believed:

The Canadian Armed Forces have been secretly developing an elite army of genetically engineered, super intelligent, giant raccoons to invade nearby countries.

In our representative online sample of 810 New Zealanders, 8.3% of respondents confessed to being insincere in the survey.

Another 7.2% said they thought the Canadian raccoon army theory was probably or definitely true. That proportion – similar to findings from Australia – would equate to more than 300,000 adult New Zealanders.

To complicate things slightly, there was some overlap between those admitting to insincere answers and those claiming to believe the raccoon conspiracy. Combined, 13.3% of respondents fell into one or both groups – roughly one in eight people not appearing to take the survey seriously.

Importantly, these respondents were also much more likely to endorse other conspiracy theories, inflating estimates of how widespread those beliefs really are.

For instance, 6.5% of the full sample endorsed the claim that governments around the world are covering up the fact that 5G mobile networks spread coronavirus.

But once we removed the insincere responders, that figure dropped by more than half to 2.7%.

Across 13 different conspiracy theories, the estimated proportion of believers fell substantially once those respondents were excluded.

Another interesting insight from our study was that people endorsing contradictory conspiracy theories were much more likely to show signs of responding insincerely.

Previous studies have found some people appear to believe conspiracy theories that directly contradict each other. In our survey, for example, some participants agreed both that COVID-19 is a myth and that governments are covering up the fact that 5G networks spread the virus.

But nearly three-quarters of those respondents also showed signs of joking or dishonest answers.

This suggests genuinely believing contradictory conspiracy theories may be less common than previously thought.

Not every conspiracy believer is joking

Our findings add further weight to the idea that surveys may overestimate how many people truly believe some conspiracy theories – thanks, in part, to trolls.

But does that mean all conspiracy theory research is bunk?

Fortunately not. Most research in this area is not focused on counting conspiracy believers, but on understanding why people hold these beliefs and what effects they can have.

We tested several well-established findings from earlier conspiracy theory research to see whether they still held up once insincere respondents were removed from the data.

For example, previous studies have found that people who endorse conspiracy theories are more likely to see the world as a dangerous and threatening place.

We found the same pattern. In fact, removing insincere respondents made little difference to the broader relationships identified in earlier research.

Nevertheless, we recommend that future surveys include ways to gauge whether respondents are answering sincerely and account for this in the analysis. At the very least, researchers should acknowledge that trolls and joking responses can distort their results.

While our research suggests some people are taking the mickey in surveys, it also shows a significant minority genuinely appear to believe some of these claims.

In some cases – such as believing authorities are covering up the fact that the Earth is flat – this may be relatively harmless. But other conspiracy beliefs can lead to real-world harm.

Good-quality research is essential for understanding how sincere believers end up down these rabbit holes, and how those beliefs influence real-world behaviour.

Research into why people embrace conspiracy theories – and the real-world consequences of those beliefs – remains important.

But when surveys suggest millions may believe in lizard overlords or genetically engineered raccoon armies, it is also worth remembering the “Lizardman constant”: some respondents may simply be having us on.

The authors acknowledge the contributions of Rob Ross, Mathew Ling and Stephen Hill to this article.

John Kerr is supported by a Royal Society Te Apārangi Mana Tūānuku Research Leader Fellowship.

This research was supported by the Marsden Fund Council from Government funding, managed by Royal Society Te Apārangi.

Mathew Marques does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

General practitioners (GPs) and hospital doctors are usually the first contact point for patients, but as our new research shows, they can take on different roles, acting either as gatekeepers or brokers.

As gatekeepers they make sure unnecessary investigations are avoided and scarce resources used efficiently. As brokers, they advocate for their patients’ access to the limited resources available.

For people living with life-limiting disease, the role a doctor adopts can mean the difference between timely care and dangerous delay.

Our research focused on people who had lived with a terminal cancer diagnosis for a long time. The impact of these different roles can be seen clearly.

When GPs were concerned a person’s symptoms could indicate cancer, most patients were referred to specialist services quickly so diagnostic work could be undertaken.

But there were also cases where patients, even with a history of cancer, were not referred quickly. There are several reasons why this might occur.

One is that the GP thinks the patient’s symptoms are due to a different condition. For example, one of the people in our study had a history of breast cancer, but also of mental health issues. When they presented with breathlessness, their GP prescribed an antidepressant.

The breathlessness persisted and the patient returned to the GP and eventually ended up in the emergency department where they were diagnosed with lung metastases.

Another patient had a lump on her breast ten years after breast cancer. Her GP said it was a cyst, and it was not until she saw a female doctor that she was sent to her specialist to find the cancer had metastasised.

Even in the hospital sector resources could be withheld from patients.

One study participant was found to have a terminal brain tumour and was sent home and told treatment would be “a waste of time”. It was only due to the tenacity of their spouse that the patient was eventually sent for possible treatment.

Doctors as advocates

In contrast, for some patients a health professional will broker access to resources others might not be given.

Again, reasons for this vary, but can often come down to some assessment about who is worthy of this extra effort.

One of the patients we spoke to had malignant melanoma that had been misdiagnosed years earlier as benign. Their specialist went in to bat for them, working to get them onto a vaccine trial, trying to make up for that system failure.

Another patient, a medical professional, was one of only 100 people in New Zealand put on an unsubsidised medication at no cost to them. Yet another, who was in their 30s, was placed on a number of trials for melanoma, even in circumstances where they did not meet the trial protocol.

We can see some clear reasons why a health professional may broker access to scarce resources for their patient. The patient may have been let down by the health system earlier, they may have strong connections with the health system because of their work, and they may be regarded as being more worthy because of their age.

There will be many other factors, but we have no systematic research on this issue. What we do have, though, is a situation where health professionals are making determinations about who is worthy of access to resources.

These decisions are not mere judgements about need or likely clinical benefits.

Reinforcing existing inequities

For Māori, gatekeeping and brokering may have very different effects.

Gatekeeping may not be malicious but can reproduce the experience of later diagnosis and poorer outcomes, which is already more common for Māori.

Māori are also less likely to start with the advantages that make a patient “broker-worthy”. If brokerage is informal and discretionary, it risks reinforcing inequities the system nominally wants to reduce.

A third role we saw was less about tests and treatments and more about what kinds of knowledge and practice are allowed into the clinic. Some practitioners acted as boundary enforcers, defending the edge of Western evidence-based medicine by excluding or ignoring other approaches to cancer and healing.

One patient in our study rejected Western medicine, concluding that doctors did not listen to them or understand their cultural and spiritual world.

GPs and hospital specialists will always have to balance finite resources, uncertain evidence and competing obligations. But whether they primarily act as gatekeepers, brokers, boundary enforcers or as bridge builders across these roles has real consequences for who is diagnosed, who is treated, and who lives well with cancer in Aotearoa.

For Māori, whose cancer journeys are already shaped by structural inequity, getting those roles right is not an abstract policy debate. It is a matter of life and death.

We need to understand medical practitioners’ decisions about which role they take on. This knowledge may help patients to advocate for themselves and researchers to analyse whether these decisions are fostering equitable outcomes.

Kevin Dew receives funding from the Marsden Fund

Chris Cunningham receives funding from The Marsden Fund, the Health Research Council and National Science Challenges.

Kerry Chamberlain receives funding from the Marsden Fund.

Richard Egan receives funding from the Marsden Fund and the Health Research Council.

Elizabeth Dennett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.