The litmus test of the quality of social surveying is the ability to anticipate election outcomes. In the United States where opinion polling started, the message of George Gallup Sr. was, if his surveys of voter preferences were reliable, then so were his surveys of consumer preferences, his bread-and-butter work.
The public release of new official statistics last April 23 was a great milestone in the monitoring of poverty in the Philippines. It was the first step into a system of officially counting the poor at least annually, rather than only once every three years.
The extensive questionnaires of both the Feb. 15-17 and the April 13-15 SWS national surveys of registered voters included items on a) religious affiliation, b) frequency of church attendance, and c) voting preferences for senatorial candidates in the next elections.
The essence of the current complaint of Rep. Tobias “Toby” Tiangco, secretary general of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), against Social Weather Stations, which he brought to the attention of the Commission on Elections, has boiled down to the proper interpretation of the words “paid for.”
This visit has been short, tiring, and also satisfying. It was sheer good luck that I was able to catch the excellent special exhibition on precolonial Philippines, which opened at 10 a.m. on Tuesday at the museum Quai Branly, with just enough time left before my official business started at 2 p.m. that day. (I guess Vice President Jejomar Binay got an advance viewing when he was here on Monday.)
I write to salute the great Onofre D. Corpuz, a most remarkable man, who passed away recently at the age of 86. In his career, O.D. was a political scientist, a public administrator—both as academic and as practitioner—a historian, an economist, and an institution builder, of the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) in particular. At the necrological services for him last Monday at the University of the Philippines Diliman Catholic chapel, his many accomplishments for UP were recited. I had to miss the DAP’s services for him the week before, due to a personal emergency.
Last week’s piece (“My favorite priest,” Inquirer, 3/16/2013) cited a 1996 study on Catholics in seven countries showing Filipinos as the least insistent that a new pope should carry out certain reforms in the Church.
Last week, the Department of Social Welfare and Development reported to the public that the conditional cash transfer program (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, or 4Ps) is “on track to achieve its objectives of promoting investments in the health and education of children while providing immediate financial support to poor families.”
The very preelection survey of Social Weather Stations was in the period Feb. 24-March 21, 1987, during the campaign for 24 Senate slots in the May election that year. It found an exact 12-12 tie between the pro-Cory and anti-Cory candidates.
This week (2/18/2013), Social Weather Stations reported that adult joblessness was 24.6 percent in its survey for the fourth quarter, done on Dec. 8-11, 2012. It was the lowest joblessness rate of 2012, having been 29.4 percent in August, 26.6 percent in May, and 34.4 percent in March.
One reason why many educated people avoid taking regular comprehensive physical examinations, even though they can afford it, is that they dread the discovery of a dire malady. They say they feel fine anyway. They resent being nagged about it, and claim personal responsibility for their health. Their loved ones practically have to drag them to hospital for checkups, lest by the time illness exhibits itself, it has become so expensive, and perhaps impossible, to cure.
Along with the cheers for the newly released statistics showing a high rate of economic growth in 2012 have come doubts from critics as to whether the growth was genuinely “inclusive,” or helpful to the poor.
