Happily, survey is rubbish

Aug 31 2008 by Ken Oxley, Sunday Sun

A NEW survey released this week has revealed that most surveys are utter rubbish.

Strictly speaking, that last sentence is a lie. As far as I’m aware, no one has ever conducted a survey into surveys.

But if they did, I’m sure they would discover the vast majority are meaningless drivel.

The latest example is a much-publicised study into “subjective wellbeing” that concluded it really is grim in our part of the world.

According to the so-called “happiness survey” — which quizzed people in 273 areas across Britain — we’re a bunch of miserable sods.

Easington in County Durham — always on or near the bottom of these dubious league tables — comes 217th on the list.

Affluent Harrogate is way down at 213th. Middlesbrough manages 184th while Newcastle is 102nd.

One of our apparently more chirpy areas is North Tyneside (what have they got to be so happy about?) but even it only comes 67th.

The survey has been widely reported in the national Press, mostly in a non-critical way that, unfortunately, lends credence to this sort of claptrap.

Yet closer inspection reveals its flaws. People in 10,000 households were quizzed.

That might sound like a lot, but it averages out at about 36 per area . . . hardly a representative sample.

Doing the maths, Newcastle has a population of 259,000. If we assume there are 2.4 people per household — the national average — the city’s happiness rating was decided by 0.03 per cent of the population.

In other words, the survey is worthless.