In SWS’ view, its survey work has, again, handily passed its self-imposed periodic test of accurately anticipating election results. Our report, “SWS/BW final preelection survey of May 2-3, 2013: 9 Team PNoy, 3 UNA in top 12; 7 Team PNoy, 2 UNA safe,” announced on May 8 (www.sws.org.ph), proved entirely correct, compared to the latest actual results, official or unofficial. It correctly preidentified all winners and losers.
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.”
I write as one of the 9.2 percent of adult Catholics in the Philippines who, according to the recent Social Weather Stations survey, have sometimes thought of leaving the Catholic Church. These instances occurred mostly in the “bad old days” before Cardinal Jaime Sin gave a new face to the Archdiocese of Manila. There have [...]
My favorite priest is also a storyteller. I strongly recommend his works of fiction as the most enjoyable way to understand the message of Jesus, and to learn about Christianity and Catholicism—which are not the same—in the world today. I am referring to the fantastically prolific (66 novels), earthy, funny, romantic, and saintly Irish-American priest, Andrew M. Greeley.
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.
The countdown on the decline of the Aquino administration began three days before the New Year. On that day, the newspapers published the Dec. 8 to 11 Social Weather Stations survey showing President Benigno Aquino’s net satisfaction rating plunging by 12 points from his +67 rating in August, just five months ago.
Last December 4, SWS presented to the media the general findings of a special new survey, commissioned by the Forum for Family Planning and Development (www.forum4fp.org), of adolescents in the National Capital Region (NCR) on the subjects of population, reproductive health (RH), HIV-AIDS and gender. For this project, SWS interviewed 600 persons of ages from 15 to 19 on Oct. 26-28, 2012. The sampling error margin is plus/minus 4 percent for adolescents in NCR.
The fact that the great majority are Catholics, whereas only a minority are Muslims, is to me only a superficial reason to call the Philippines a “Catholic” country. The fact that there are Catholic churches almost everywhere and mosques in only a few areas is also only external evidence.
There is both good news and bad news in the 2012 SWS Survey of Enterprises on Corruption, the 10th in a series from 2000, that tracks the state of public and private sector corruption from the viewpoints of Filipino business executives.
It was painful to issue the last two reports from the March 2012 Social Weather Survey—“Families rating themselves as Mahirap or Poor rose to 55%” (5/3/2012) and “Hunger at record-high 23.8% of families; Moderate Hunger at 18.0%, Severe Hunger at 5.8%” (5/8/2012)—yet necessary, as a matter of SWS’ public duty.
This refers to the recent performance survey conducted by Pulse Asia Inc. on top national officials, which showed the rating of House Speaker Feliciano “Sonny” Belmonte go down from 45 percent to 41 percent. (Inquirer, 3/23/12) Some political observers attributed Speaker Belmonte’s drop in rating to the accusation of a Metro Manila congressman that the [...]
It was exasperating to hear Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo talking about secular matters that are not within his realm of competence. I am referring to his latest statement dismissing the recent Pulse Asia survey which said 47 percent of all Filipinos believe impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona is guilty, and that media have not [...]
