Canadians Talk About Eyes, Eyesight And Eye Health

Toronto, ON - A new Ipsos Reid survey conducted on behalf of the Canadian Association of Optometrists, explored Canadians knowledge and attitudes toward eyes, eye health, and their behaviour as it pertains to their general health and contact with optometrists. The results provide some fascinating insights into how Canadians are thinking and behaving when it comes to their eyes and eye health and in particular the discrepancies between their beliefs and their propensity to take action.

Key findings from the study:

• When Canadians look at someone or meet them for the first time, the person's smile (39%) or eyes (36%) are what they notice most, by quite a wide margin, and much before other features like their hair (11%), their voice (6%), their walk (5%) or their hands (3%).
• Three out of four Canadian adults (76%) say they wear prescription eyeglasses. There are more women (79%) than men (73%) who have them.
• Canadians tend to think of people who wear eyeglasses as smart (32%), serious (26%) and important (11%). One in ten would go as far as to say a person with glasses looks sexy (13%) and fun (7%). Only 1% would characterize them as unattractive or nerdy, 8% bookish.
• Seven in ten Canadians (70%) say their eyesight is so precious to them that absolutely nothing would be worth giving it up for, not even winning the lottery, living a full healthy life to the age of 100, being Prime Minister of Canada, or enjoying great sex for the rest of their lives.
• Most Canadians believe that not being able to see their families would be the one thing they would miss most if they could no longer see.
• The ability to see is so important to most (55%) Canadian adults that they would be willing to give up some other physical ability to regain their sight if they became blind.
• A majority believe that yearly visits to a family doctor, and annual or semi-annual check-ups by a dentist are important to ensuring their general health. Only 38%, however, are of the opinion that they should be visiting an optometrist that frequently.
• When it comes to actual plans to visit an optometrist in the forthcoming year, 38% of Canadians report being `very likely' to take such action --another 34% claim to be "quite likely" to do so.

These are the findings of an online survey conducted by Ipsos Reid for The Canadian Association of Optometrist among 1121 Canadians. The interviewing was completed, online, between August 17 and August 21, 2006. These data were weighted to ensure the sample's regional and age/sex composition reflects that of the actual Canadian population according to Census data. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to within 1772.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what would have been, had this entire population been polled. For more information please contact:
Paul Orovan
Ipsos Reid Public Affairs
[email protected]
416-324-2299