‘What’s the latest?’

To the common question “What’s the latest?” I feel pleased that someone is interested, but also disappointed that he/she didn’t check the SWS website first.

A single survey generates not one report, but many.  The first two releases from the latest SWS quarterly round, fielded on June 27-30, 2014, were on the performance ratings of P-Noy (July 14) and then of Vice President Binay, Senate President Drilon, Speaker Belmonte, and Chief Justice Sereno, and the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court  and the Cabinet (July 21).

There will be many more releases from the said survey.  None of them can reflect public reaction to the July 1 ruling of the Supreme Court on the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), since we couldn’t have thought of what to ask about something that hadn’t happened yet.  The DAP ruling will figure in the third-quarter survey, for which media releases will start in October.

A standard survey asks more than a few questions. For instance, the SWS June 2014 survey questionnaire asked 37 questions for the head of the household, on topics pertaining to the whole family like poverty and hunger, and 161 questions of a random adult of the household, pertaining to his/her own personal conditions and opinions.  Aside from these were background questions on the household (33 items) and the adult respondent (27 items).  On average, it takes about one hour for an interview, done face to face, in dwellings sampled nationwide by a systematic, multistage random process.

The 37 + 161 = 198 questions and 33 + 27 = 60 backgrounders make up 198 + 60 = 258 data items in one interview.  Given 1,200 interviews in the

sample, the complete national dataset is a matrix of 258 columns and 1,200 rows, implying 309,600 cells.  The SWS public-use survey archive has 237 national and 256 subnational datasets, as of April 30, 2014.

Own-account versus commissioned items. The questions about government performance and about the people’s quality of life are on SWS’ own account.  They normally constitute at least half of the entire questionnaire. We thought of these items, and mean them for public information.  We assert our freedom to publish them, and are solely responsible for them.

The regular quarterly Social Weather Survey is an omnibus, with typically some items that are commissioned or contracted for. Some contracts specify that the items are for immediate public disclosure.   Others put the items under embargo for a while; three years is standard.  In keeping with SWS’ mission as a nonstock, nonprofit institute, no survey items are permanently confidential.  All data go into the SWS survey archive, and become open for public use eventually.  A sponsor may choose to publish its own items at any time, thus lifting its embargo.  All published survey findings must identify the sponsor.

The revenue from commissioned items helps to pay the cost of the survey.  When it falls short, SWS absorbs the gap.  Like the paying passengers of an airline flight, the sponsors are not responsible for the occupants of the nonrevenue or public-benefit seats.   If they desire privacy, SWS has no obligation to identify them.

What SWS itself releases to the public are the nonsponsored items.  We don’t release everything at the same time, having learned from experience that a full report is indigestible by the media.  Years ago, we would give a full seminar on the entire contents of a survey, only to find that reporters would only select parts they rate “newsworthy,” and ignore the rest.  But our ultimate objective is serve the people, not the media per se.  For us, the media are simply a means of channeling information.

An omnibus enables analysis of the interaction of “copassengers” with each other.  For example, one can compute the correlation of the satisfaction with P-Noy with the satisfaction with VP Binay for June 2014.  It is +.09, which is small yet statistically significant.  It is a positive number—i.e., persons satisfied with P-Noy tend to be more satisfied with Binay than those dissatisfied with P-Noy (and vice versa).  Even though their political parties are different, P-Noy and Binay do not polarize the people—unlike in the United States, where Democrats and Republicans are strongly polarized on Barack Obama.

One can compare not only what people from different areas think of P-Noy, but also what the poor, the hungry, those with versus those without jobs, optimists versus pessimists, and the happy versus the unhappy, think of him.  One can relate satisfaction with his performance, or that of any official for that matter, to the grade of each separate subject of the administration’s report card.  One can do this for any official in the survey.

A survey is a listening device. The purpose of the SWS surveys is to reveal, using collective numbers, how we Filipinos, in our entirety, are (or are not) progressing.  The survey interviewers are trained to remember that there are no right or wrong answers to the questions.  Their mission is to get truthful answers.

Surveys do not tell anyone what to think—individually, one already knows one’s own mind—but what others, far from one’s social ambit, think.  They show that we Filipinos are not all alike, but have sincere differences.  Our situations and views are not static, but change from time to time, hopefully for the greater good. The surveys are instruments for understanding and appreciating our Filipino sisters and brothers, in our democratic setting.

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Contact mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.