The SWS surveys of 2020

For over two decades now, it’s been the tradition for Social Weather Stations to do a public review of the past year’s surveys, in cooperation with the Asian Institute of Management and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. This year’s review was done on Feb. 5, by means of a webinar on account of the pandemic.

Temporary shift to mobile phone surveying. Our first quarterly survey for 2020 was all set for fielding in March, but was abruptly canceled due to the lockdown that month. SWS quickly retooled for a shift to surveying by mobile phone (MP), for which, fortunately, it had already compiled MP numbers of over 31,000 respondents in its face-to-face (F2F) probability surveys in 2017-19, who had given permission to be re-interviewed by MP.

SWS did its first MP survey on May 4-10, on a sample of 4,010 Filipinos 15 years old and over, drawn randomly from the said compilation (see “Restarting the SWS surveys,” Opinion, 5/23/20). That was relatively large, but we didn’t want to skimp on the first try. It did a second MP survey of 1,656 adults on July 3-6, and a third one of 1,249 adults on Sept. 27-30. (These surveys discovered respondents who were not in their original regions when they joined the SWS panel—they had been stranded far from home by the community quarantines!) After some weeks, with the transportation situation eased, SWS did a fourth survey, by personal F2F interviews this time, of 1,500 adults on Nov. 21-25.

From May onward, the many findings of the 2020 surveys came out in a series of media releases (see www.sws.org.ph). Here are major ones:

We Filipinos have a very great fear of infection by COVID-19. This fear is more intense than in encounters with past viruses, and is worsened by the concerns of many that government reports may be understating the problem.

The great majority of the people do cooperate with health protocols on using masks and shields, washing hands, physical distancing, and staying at home. They are very willing to help in contact tracing.

The pains and stresses on the people are due both to their voluntary sacrifices and to the government-imposed lockdowns, curfews, and stoppage of public transport.

As the year went on, the numbers helped by the government flattened, and the amount of new “ayuda” dwindled.

The lack of job or livelihood assistance is the most-perceived failure of the government in the fight against COVID-19.

The basic SWS Quality of Life indicators all suffered record worsts: Losers 82 percent in May; Hunger 30.7 percent and Joblessness 39.5 percent in September. There was slight relief by November. Self-Rated Poverty was 48 percent of families in November.

Fully half of the people say it is dangerous to print or broadcast anything against the administration—perceived freedom of expression is weak, as it already was in 2019. The nonrenewal of ABS-CBN’s franchise was very unpopular.

The Filipino people are maintaining their traditional strong trust in the United States; it is the most trusted of all countries, by far.

On the other hand, Filipinos very strongly distrust China. They continue to demand firm government resistance to the incursions of China in the West Philippine Sea.

The people are hopeful for new medicines and vaccines against COVID-19 to arrive after a year. Two-thirds were willing to be vaccinated, as of September.

There is a glimmer of hope: Net optimism about coming personal quality of life recovered from -19 in May to +35 in November, and 69 percent felt that the worst has passed. Will they be right?

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