Tag Archives: social

Are the British Public illogical or is the British Social Attitudes Survey simply a waste of money?

It has to be one or the other…. or maybe this is just a good example of how the way you phrase a questions, and the broader context in which those questions are set, influence responses in questionnaires.

I blogged a week ago on some of the findings of the chapter on peoples beliefs about ‘meritocracy’ – The British Public seem to think that meritocratic factors are seen as being the most important when it comes to a person “getting ahead” in modern Britain….

  • 84% say hard work is important;
  • 74% think a good education is important
  • 71% say ambition.
  • 33% think knowing the right people is important.
  • and only 14% think that being born into a wealthy family was thought to be important

If, however, you follow the link to the first chapter, on attitudes towards inequality, you find that people do not believe there is equal opportunity inBritain…

• 80% say children from better-off families have many more opportunities than children from less well-off families.

• 68% say some people have higher incomes than others because they are born to rich parents and have advantages from the start.

• Only 27% say people in Britain today have similar opportunities regardless of their income.

Given that the BSA takes care to ensure representativeness in its sampling (also given the extreme differences in stats) – the difference here is either because the general public are stupid (if you define stupid as the inability to make logical connections) or it’s the result of the context of the questions shaping the responses – in chapter two the researchers say ‘we are doing research into how people ‘get ahead’ in life….we want your views – people’s minds narrow to focus on individual level factors such as ambition etc….. but if you start off by saying ‘ we are looking at social inequality people look at the bigger picture.

Fascinating – and depressing – well, depressing if you want to get to what people think and feel – but not depressing if you’re looking for insight into how to manipulate questionnaires to get the results you desire!