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Lies, Damned Lies And Opinion Polls
What's one to do? Polls are being dumbed down daily, and no matter how hard I try, the polls' equivalent of Gresham's Law seems destined to drive out quality, to the detriment of the proper use of polls to support advocacy, illuminate debate, control demagoguery, and inform people what others are thinking.
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Workplace Discrimination
Age is the largest determinant of whether a person is likely to be ill-treated in the workplace, according to new research from MORI. The survey — Diversity Matters — conducted for The Guardian and TMP Worldwide, shows nearly a quarter (23%) of British employees claim to have fallen victim to discrimination, bullying or harassment at work. This rises to 37% of older workers (over 55s). Ill treatment because of age is higher than that due to gender, race or sexuality, and is marginally higher than that because of disability.
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Three In Five 'Believe In God'
Three in five Britons (60%) say they believe in God, according to a new survey from the MORI Social Research Institute. The research, conducted for the BBC's 'Heaven and Earth Show', shows a small drop over the past five years (down from 64% in February 1998) in the percentage of Britons who say they believe in God.
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Scots Support Increase In Windfarms
People in Scotland who live in close proximity (up to 20km) to a windfarm show substantially more support for than opposition to them. New research by MORI Scotland for the Scottish Executive shows more than half (54%) would support increasing the number of turbines at their local windfarm by half. Four in five (82%) would support windfarms taking a greater role in the generating of electricity in Scotland over the next 15 years.
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Public Confusion on Chemicals
No single source is trusted by a majority of the British public to tell the truth about the risks of chemicals in household goods used in society, according to a survey by the MORI Social Research Institute for the Scientific Alliance.
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Changing Values (2): Work & Leisure
Some further comparisons of British attitudes half-a-century ago, around the time of the coronation, with the way we think today, this time concentrating on work and leisure. (As before, for the 1950s we are heavily reliant on surveys from Gallup, the only pollster then publishing regular public opinion surveys, the findings of which survive in book form - George H Gallup, The Gallup International Public Opinion Polls: Great Britain 1937-1975, New York: Random House, 1976, and Anthony King and Robert Wybrow, British Political Opinion 1937-2000: The Gallup Polls, London: Politico's, 2001.)
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Consumer Power
Who exercise 'consumer power'? Do you recall that at the turn of the year I wrote about Consuming Passions in my monthly column? That article warned PR practitioners to think about who wields consumer power, and gave some clues of who in our society does what to express their ire against organisations which failed to live up to expectation.
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Trust And Mistrust At Work
Employees' trust in upward communication has risen dramatically in the past decade, according to MORI's latest research, presented at the Communicators in Business conference in May. The survey pinpoints the most and least trusted information channels, enabling internal communicators to fine-tune their communications strategies.