Public Development Awareness in the UK
The Global Call to Action Against Poverty is about getting people around the world active and united in political activism to fight the structural causes of global poverty. At the root of this effort is raising awareness of development issues. How is the Global Call's national platform in the UK, MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY, doing?
Andrew Darnton, takes a look at whether public understanding of development issues in the UK has changed during the year so far.
This article takes a look at data from Wave 3 of the quantitative findings of Comic Relief's 'Public Perceptions of Poverty' (PPP) study, funded by DFID. The data were collected through 2,135 face to face interviews across the UK from 15- 19 July 2005. This was timed to commence one week after the G8 Summit in Gleneagles,and by chance, also commenced one week after the London bombings of 7 July 2005.
Where possible, the Wave 3 data presented here are compared with those gathered in Waves 1 and 2, which used the same methodology, and were conducted in December 2004 and April 2005.
In looking at the effect of the MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY campaign, findings showed a phenomenal increase in levels of public awareness across the three waves of PPP research. In Wave 3, over three quarters (76 per cent) of all respondents said they knew something about the campaign and the vast majority of respondents (87 per cent) had heard of MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY.
In Wave 3, 15 per cent of all respondents said they had been involved in the MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY campaign. These people tended to hold degrees (29 per cent of those with degrees were involved), be drawn from higher social grades (24 per cent of ABs*), and be younger (21 per cent of 18 to 30s). In terms of the ways in which the 15 per cent of all respondents were involved in the campaign, half (50 per cent) of these respondents had worn a white band (making that the most popular MPH action undertaken), while a quarter (25 per cent) had registered on the MPH website, and a fifth (19 per cent) had sent a text message to MPH. 10 per cent of these respondents had joined in an MPH event other than the Edinburgh rally, while 2 per cent had gone on the Edinburgh rally.
In Wave 3, 42 per cent of respondents agreed that there was 'nothing they could do personally to tackle poverty', although 44 per cent disagreed, and this represents a slight shift away from agreeing with the statement since PPP surveying began. Furthermore, just over half of respondents (53 per cent) agreed that 'all they could do personally to tackle poverty was to give money', while just over a third (34 per cent) disagreed, and this represents the highest recorded level of disagreement with the statement yet. It is notable that among the 15 per cent of respondents who had been involved in MPH, 52 per cent disagreed that all they could do was give money.
In response to the PPP survey's five statements on debt trade and aid, four of the statements in the Wave 3 survey revealed almost no variation in the findings since Wave 2. The one statement to show wider variation between the two Waves was that aid should be given to poor countries without conditions attached: only 52 per cent of respondents agreed with this approach, and 34 per cent disagreed with it. These findings represent a dwindling of the public's support for unconditional aid: 60 per cent had agreed with this statement in Wave 2. It may be that increased awareness of aid issues has been accompanied by an increased insistence on conditionalities.
Wave 3 includes some interesting findings in relation to trade justice. In response to a new attitude statement the vast majority of respondents appeared to support the goals of trade justice: 82 per cent of respondents agreed that 'the governments of rich countries should remove the trade barriers that stop poor countries from trading fairly with rich countries'. Over half of the public (56 per cent) 'agreed strongly' with that statement. A question asking about knowledge and awareness of key terms found that nearly half (47 per cent) of respondents in Wave 3 knew something about trade justice, while altogether the majority (57 per cent) were aware of the term; in Wave 1 only a third (36 per cent) of respondents had heard of it.
One other new attitude statement in Wave 3 produced very high levels of agreement: the vast majority (80 per cent) of respondents agreed that 'most financial aid to poor countries is wasted because their governments are corrupt', while only 6 per cent disagreed. The massive support for this view cohered even among sympathetic subgroups. The scale of agreement with this statement suggests that corruption is one of the most salient issues in the public's mind when considering poverty in poor countries, and that the outcome of efforts to win public support for increased aid is to a great extent predetermined by changing public perceptions of corruption (and how to combat it) in poor countries.
Andrew Darnton is an independent researcher who is working on the three-year 'Public Perceptions of Poverty' research programme for Comic Relief.
Email: ad@andrewdarnton.co.uk
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.
- The next wave of PPP omnibus research is scheduled for January 2006 (after the WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong).
*Refers to social grade A and B under the ABC1 system used for market research and data collection. www.mori.com