Public Awareness - Understanding International Development Issues
Andrew Darnton takes a look at what the statistical evidence can tell us about actual levels of public understanding of international development, drawing on data from a current research project called Public Perceptions of Poverty.
The evidence on public awareness and understanding of international development issues in this country shows that the UK public is in principle committed to the agenda of reducing poverty. According to Wave 1 of the Public Perceptions of Poverty (PPP) Omnibus Survey undertaken in December 2004, nearly three quarters (73 per cent) of all respondents said they were concerned about poverty in poor countries; 30 per cent said they were 'very concerned'. However, the qualitative elements of the PPP research have shown that the issue of 'Third World poverty' does not tend to emerge spontaneously as a concern in discussion groups, though 'Iraq', 'the tsunami' and 'immigration' does. Few people seek out the poverty issue; it finds them (and some avoid it).
Responses to questions about 'concern for poverty' also show that the public is made up of subgroups whose views on this question are diverse. In the DfID/ONS Omnibus Survey conducted in July 2003, 67 per cent of all respondents were generally concerned about poverty in developing countries while 88 per cent of those with degree-level qualifications felt likewise. Only 57 per cent of those respondents with no qualifications expressed concern. This pattern is repeated across the survey, with clear differences being noted in the findings from different groups of respondents, particularly according to their age, social class, and level of educational attainment. Other surveys that have looked at responses across different ethnic groups suggest that ethnicity is also an important dimension to observe when investigating public perceptions of poverty. For instance, in the PPP Wave 1 Survey, 48 per cent of non-white respondents reported being 'very concerned' about poverty in poor countries. It seems that talking about different 'publics' is more meaningful in this context than talking about 'the public'.
Qualitative evidence suggests that despite a broad concern for reducing poverty, most people have a limited understanding of the key issues that relate to the poverty reduction agenda: debt, trade and aid. In the DfID/ONS Omnibus Survey (2003) aid was the issue with which most people were familiar, while debt was only familiar to a minority, and trade to a very small minority. Qualitative evidence emphasises these low levels of knowledge: the Viewing the World study for DFID in 2000 found that most respondents did not understand Third World debt, and were unaware of any campaign to 'Drop the Debt'. Developmental research for Christian Aid's Trade Justice Campaign in 2004 found that understanding of international trade as a topic was very poor, and people did not tend to think much about it. That study showed that very few people were aware of international trade rules, and almost no one had heard of 'liberalisation' or 'protectionism'. More fundamentally perhaps, the vast majority of respondents in that study did not understand the difference between 'free trade' and 'fair trade'. One respondent commented: "I think people perceive free trade as being a good thing."
The fundamental learning from the Trade Justice Campaign study was that most respondents did not know that developed nations play an active role in sustaining poverty in developing nations, through existing systems of international trade. When asked in that study (and others) to identify the causes of poverty in developing nations, almost all respondents cite 'internal issues', such as war, natural disasters (including flood and drought), and corrupt governments. The only ways in which the governments of developed nations are seen to be responsible for poverty overseas is through their not providing enough aid, and through their having historically left developing nations who were once their dependencies with a legacy of poverty - even then, these causes are only identified by a minority of respondents. In the PPP qualitative research of February 2005, it was found that human suffering and natural disasters were the only effective ways into discussions of poverty for most members of the public. When members of the public are told that trade arrangements are keeping developing nations poor, this is greeted by nearly all respondents as 'new news'. One respondent in the Trade Justice Campaign study was typical in commenting: "I didn't know international trade rules were a factor in poverty in the Third World."
The current PPP research probes these issues in greater detail. In Wave 1 of the PPP Omnibus Survey (2004), when asked about five ways of tackling world poverty, nearly three quarters of respondents agreed that fairer trade and more aid are required (71 per cent agreed with each method). However, only a narrow majority of respondents felt that aid should be given without conditions attached (57 per cent), that debts should be cancelled in full (56 per cent), and that trade justice not free trade was needed (55 per cent agreed) in order to tackle world poverty. Aid given without conditions attached was the most controversial method of tackling poverty (27 per cent disagreed with it), while trade justice was the least understood method (18 per cent didn't know whether to agree with it, or did not understand the issues involved). The qualitative strand of PPP research suggests however that caution should be applied when referring to these data. While the relative level of understanding between the three areas of debt, trade and aid are informative, the extent of knowledge claimed among the public in quantitative levels of research seems higher than actual levels of knowledge shown during the qualitative levels of research.
This lack of understanding of the underlying causes of poverty also contributes to the widespread belief among the public that all developed nations can do to tackle poverty is provide money and aid. In the DfID/ONS Omnibus (2003), when asked what was the most important thing the UK Government could do to tackle poverty overseas, the most commonly-chosen answers were 'provide financial support and other types of aid' (27 per cent of respondents) and 'reduce war and conflict' (28 per cent). These data suggest that most people are unaware of any alternative means to tackle poverty, including changing the international trade system. Only 17 per cent of respondents to that question identified 'working to cancel debts owed by developing countries' as the most important way for the UK Government to tackle poverty, and only 13 per cent identified 'working for a fairer world trading system' (it is however interesting to note that these rates rose dramatically among respondents holding degree-level qualifications).
In the PPP Omnibus Survey (2004), 40 per cent of respondents agreed that there was 'nothing they could do personally to tackle poverty', although 44 per cent disagreed. More emphatically, more than half of respondents (58 per cent) agreed that 'all they could do personally to tackle poverty was to give money', while just over a quarter (27 per cent) disagreed. In the DfID/ONS Omnibus (2003), only 36 per cent of respondents said they could reduce poverty personally by 'putting pressure on politicians to increase the assistance the Government gives to developing countries'. In an extension to the Viewing the World study in 2002, faced with a BBC news report about Angola, one respondent typically commented, "What can we do? Send money but that is as far as it goes really".
It is the questions on what people can do personally that seem to sum up the air of futility which hangs around public perceptions of poverty in the developing world (and especially in Africa). Even those members of the public who are inclined to take action (ie. give money) are pessimistic that their contribution will make a difference. Many other people are deterred from taking action at all, perhaps by the hopelessness that is inherent in current visions of Africa. The Viewing the World study argued that without some explanation and background information being provided to the public when development stories are covered on TV, the public will always have the sense that problems of poverty are inexplicable and irredeemable. The study for the Trade Justice Campaign served to extend this point, showing that if the public are not made aware of the links between the trading habits of developed nations and continuing poverty in the developing world then they will fail to be empowered to take action to reduce poverty - apart from simply giving money to charity appeals.
Coming up to date, the qualitative PPP research has revealed that the challenge for public engagement is not just to foreground the unfairness of current aid, debt and trade arrangements, but to tell people there is something they can do to tackle poverty in the long term. NGOs should be communicating how the UK public can make poverty history, as well as why it is urgent to do so.
Public Perceptions of Poverty has been funded by DFID's Development Awareness Fund and has three objectives:
- assess levels of public awareness and understanding of world poverty;
- explore barriers and drivers to public empathy and action;
- investigate the role of the media, of Red Nose Day, and MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY.
This programme is part of a wider project designed to improve the quantity and quality of development stories in the media around Red Nose Day, and it is anticipated that it will be concluded after Red Nose Day 2007.
Andrew Darnton is an independent researcher who is working on the three-year 'Public Perceptions of Poverty' research programme for Comic Relief. Contact Andrew, email: ad@andrewdarnton.co.uk.
