Perceptions are not reality: Things the world gets wrong

Ipsos’s new global survey, building on work in the UK last year for the Royal Statistical Society, highlights how wrong the public across 14 countries are about the basic make-up of their populations and the scale of key social issues.

Bobby Duffy, Managing Director of Ipsos Social Research Institute, said:

“These misperceptions present clear issues for informed public debate and policy-making. For example, public priorities may well be different if we had a clearer view of the scale of immigration and the real incidence of teenage mothers. People also under-estimate “positive” behaviours like voting, which may be important if people think it is more “normal” not to vote than it actually is."

“This is the first international study to look at these misperceptions across a range of issues and countries – and it shows the British are far from alone in being wrong. In fact we’re among the better informed countries – but there are still huge gaps between perceptions and reality on a number of key issues in Britain.”

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