"People wrong about nearly everything"

British public wrong about nearly everything, survey shows

"A new survey for the Royal Statistical Society and King's College London shows public opinion is repeatedly off the mark on issues including crime, benefit fraud and immigration.

"- Benefit fraud: the public think that £24 of every £100 of benefits is fraudulently claimed. Official estimates are that just 70 pence in every £100 is fraudulent - so the public conception is out by a factor of 34.
- Immigration: some 31 per cent of the population is thought to consist of recent immigrants, when the figure is actually 13 per cent.
- Teen pregnancy is thought to be 25 times higher than the official estimates: 15 per cent of of girls under 16 are thought to become pregnant every year, when official figures say the amount is closer to 0.6 per cent.
Among the other surprising figures are that 26 per cent of people think foreign aid is in the top three items the Government spends money on (it actually makes up just 1.1 per cent of expenditure), and that 29 per cent of people think more is spent on Jobseekers' Allowance than pensions.
In fact we spend 15 times more on pensions - £4.9 billion on JSA vs £74.2 billion on pensions.


Interesting. But, stats can make any argument. Been convinced?

British public wrong about nearly everything, survey shows

"A new survey for the Royal Statistical Society and King's College London shows public opinion is repeatedly off the mark on issues including crime, benefit fraud and immigration.

"- Benefit fraud: the public think that £24 of every £100 of benefits is fraudulently claimed. Official estimates are that just 70 pence in every £100 is fraudulent - so the public conception is out by a factor of 34.
- Immigration: some 31 per cent of the population is thought to consist of recent immigrants, when the figure is actually 13 per cent.
- Teen pregnancy is thought to be 25 times higher than the official estimates: 15 per cent of of girls under 16 are thought to become pregnant every year, when official figures say the amount is closer to 0.6 per cent.
Among the other surprising figures are that 26 per cent of people think foreign aid is in the top three items the Government spends money on (it actually makes up just 1.1 per cent of expenditure), and that 29 per cent of people think more is spent on Jobseekers' Allowance than pensions.
In fact we spend 15 times more on pensions - £4.9 billion on JSA vs £74.2 billion on pensions.


Interesting. But, stats can make any argument. Been convinced?

I think a more accurate conclusion would be "Media is ****", or "People too trusting of the media".

That article isn't too clear in its findings itself. For example, what does " the public think that £24 of every £100 of benefits is fraudulently claimed" mean? Did they ask all the people (1015 of them) to state a number and then average them? Is £24 the median?

in some set ups you get a wisdom of crowds effect. The mean of a large number of guesses in a 'guess the number of sweets in a jar' is supposedly very accurate (iirc)

tbh if thats all they looked at then it seems to be strongly biased towards recent media 'hot button' topics.

I'd like a distribution curve (or at least a histogram) of what percentage of benefits was believed to be fraudulently claimed, as well as the question that was asked (and other material and questions that were asked alongside it), not just one number we're not told the method of calculation of. The article's just as bad as the problem it is claiming exists - in fact, it's part of the problem itself. Does it even link to the survey it's 'quoting'? I couldn't find a link.

Wonder how many of these are DM readers...

Pretty sure it's this one:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3188/Perceptions-are-not-reality-the-top-10-we-get-wrong.aspx

Questions and full stats are in the PDF.

Isn't it interesting how the misinformation mostly surrounds targets favoured by the right-wing media.