Tag Archives: Ipsos MORI

August 26, 2013 · 10:00 am

Confidence in institutions: UK vs. Spain

Evaluation of institutions, entities and social groups (source: Metroscopia for El País, 25/08/2013).

The Spanish newspaper El País published yesterday a survey it had commanded to Metroscopia about the confidence that Spanish people had in different institutions (see the complete article, in Spanish, “Por qué no se hunde España“). See a summary of the results in the graphic to the right.

Following an exercise during a training module last year, I published a post discussing a similar survey which is yearly made in Britain by the consultancy Ipsos Mori, the Veracity Index (see in the link results from 1983 to 2011).

I thought that it could be interesting to show the results of both surveys side by side to try to spot some commonalities and some differences of how the different groups and institutions are perceived in Britain and in Spain. I did the comparison even if the questions used for the survey are not exactly the same in both cases and if one survey dates from 2011 and the other from 2013. See the comparison in the picture below.

Another difference is that the Spanish survey is including up to 36 different groups versus 16 being evaluated in the UK, but this is not impacting the comparison as each group is rated individually.

Let’s see the similarities:

  • 4 institutions / groups are very well-regarded in both countries, with a rating over 70% in both cases: doctors, teachers, professors and scientists.
  • 4 institutions / groups are very badly regarded in both countries, with a rating of around 30% or lower in both cases: unions, business leaders, government and politicians.

The biggest differences:

  • 3 groups are much better perceived in Spain than in the UK: the police, civil servants and journalists.
  • 2 groups are much worse perceived in Spain than in the UK: judges and clergyman/priests (especially bishops).
Comparison of confidence polls in Britain (2011) and in Spain (2013) (sources: Ipsos and Metroscopia for El País).

Comparison of confidence polls in Britain (2011) and in Spain (2013) (sources: Ipsos and Metroscopia for El País).

How would you rate these groups? (my rating is published in the post from some months ago)

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November 8, 2012 · 8:00 am

Do teams make better quality decisions?

As part of a course module I took weeks ago, we carried some exercises on the composition and dynamics of teams. To respond to the question “Do teams make better quality decisions?” we did the following exercise:

Individually, we had to classify 13 professions according to the trustworthiness they inspired on each one of us (1 for the most trustworthy, 13 for the least). Then, we were grouped in teams and had to agree on a common new ranking (*). Then we checked both of our rankings with the ones provided by Ipsos MORI in a recent Veracity Index [PDF, 50kB].

See below the different rankings and relative deviations:

Rankings on trustworthiness.

The individual ranking is my ranking in this case.

The aim of the test is to check if the deviation between the individual ranking and the MORI one is higher than the deviation of the team ranking compared to the MORI one. That is the case with me (46) and my team (32) in the exercise. This is done to prove that the collective thinking will produce a better decision.

I still have trouble with the findings. It is obvious that the team decision provides a more balanced decision, the larger the group, the more balanced it is. But confess that I struggle to accept it as better or of a better quality.

To give you food for thought I emphasized in bold those professions in which the deviations were higher:

  • Ordinary people: who I found way more trustworthy than my team members did.
  • Scientists: who I find more trustworthy (1) than the MORI test does (6).
  • Business leaders: who both my team and I trust more than the MORI responders do.
  • Clergymen: which I found the least trustworthy (13), as opposed to the high ranking given by society (4).
  • Television news readers: who society at large finds more reliable than my team and I do.

Try yourself the test and see what you find :-).

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(*) In my group we opted for calculating first arithmetic averages and re-rank the professions and then we made two adjustment at the request of one member, a compromise the other two members agreed on.

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