Online audience misread key issues: Ipsos study

`Perils of Perception’ reveals gaps in the online audience’s understanding of global issues
Ipsos’ latest `Perils of Perception’ survey highlights how wrong the online public across 38 countries are about key global issues in their country.
In Asia Pacific, countries included in the survey were Singapore, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand.
Mick Gordon, Managing Director, Ipsos Hong Kong said: “On many subjects – murder rates, terrorist deaths, teenage pregnancy, diabetes and how healthy people feel – things are not as bad as they seem. Hong Kong people also seem fairly accurate on most important issues, however, the data shows they hugely underestimate the significance of the suicide issue in the city.”
The Ipsos study reveals there is a real split in accuracy on the proportion of deaths by suicide among young people. Hong Kong people estimated the proportion of deaths of women aged 15-24 due to suicide at 14% when the actual was 50%.
The same mismatch was seen for men. Estimates for the deaths of young men due to suicide was 14% when the actual number was 38.4%.
Among individual Asia Pacific countries, some things very estimated wrong while few others were correct.
1. Good Health: In Hong Kong, people report their health as worse than what is the real figure. “Our average guess is that 41% of people say their health is good or very good, but actually 58% say their health is good or very good. The Asia Pacific region average is 55% for people saying their health is good or very good, while 9% said their health was poor,” said Mike.
2. Teenage pregnancy: we hugely overestimate the proportion of 15-19-year-old women and girls giving birth each year across the Asia Pacific region. Hong Kong people think it’s 10% when the actual figure is only 0.3%.
3. Facebook membership: All countries also overestimate Facebook membership, with an average guess that 82% of Hong Kongers aged 13+ have a Facebook account, when the actual figure is 65%. The Asia Pacific average was 71%.
These are some of the findings of the study, carried out between 28th September, 2017, until 19th October, 2017.
Further, most countries overestimate the number of registered vehicles per 100 people, Hong Kongers estimate it at 33% when it is only 7%, with the Asia Pacific average being 84%. In vaccines, there seems to be a wide variety of views among Asia Pacific countries when it comes to beliefs around the link between vaccines and autism in healthy children despite the claim being widely discredited. In Hong Kong 22% believe the statement to be true and 50% say they don’t know,
Only 17% of people think the murder rate is lower in their country than it was in 2000 – but it is significantly down in most Asia Pacific countries, and, across the countries overall, it is down 49%. • Only 19% think deaths from terrorist attacks are lower in the last 15 years than they were in the 15 years before that – when they have actually reduced by about 15% across the 11 APAC countries surveyed.
Most overestimated the percentage of prisoners who are foreigners in their countries, with the average guess at 22%, when it is actually 9%.
People generally overestimate how connected by technology they are, with the average guess across Asia Pacific countries that 71% have a Facebook account when only 42% do (excludes China).
People in every country overestimate the extent of diabetes in their country. Asia Pacific respondents thinks 35% of their population have the condition when only 8% do.
The survey was conducted in 38 countries around the world, via the Ipsos Online Panel system.
In Asia Pacific, the Philippines are the least accurate country, while Singapore is the most accurate.
Approximately 500 individuals aged 16-64 were surveyed in Argentina, Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Hungary, India, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Turkey,
Details of the survey can be found in the link here: https://www.ipsos.com/en-hk/hong-kong-people-hugely-underestimate-proportion-suicides-among-younger-population

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