Survey/Audience analysis – Poverty Awareness

As you can see, a large majority of the audience for my survey were female rather than male (approx. 65%). This potentially could mean a number of things. One of the most likely things that this tells me is that females are more likely to empathies with people effected by poverty, or feel more obliged to take part in helping out, this being more likely to take the survey. The fact that I sent my survey to almost a completely 50/50 split between males and females backs up this theory, meaning that I didn’t specifically send the survey to more females in order to obtain these results. What this shows me is that when creating my survey aimed at raising awareness (particularly amongst the middle class) towards poverty, it will be important that I am able to appeal to this male audience who seem more reluctant and less interested about the topic. The main way that I can project this knowledge onto my campaign is through the use of more masculine colors (no pinks or purples), or by using a choice of words which help me cater towards a male audience etc.

A large majority of the audience for my survey were aged between 16-20 (more than half), and there were very little over the age of 60 (5%). One key piece of information that must be taken into consideration when analyzing these results is the fact that a large proportion of the people who I chose to send my survey out to were friends aged 17, 18 and 19, so it is highly likely that this isn’t an accurate representation of willingness to participate in a poverty awareness based survey based on age. What these results do show me is that many young people do seem to have taken enough interest in the topic to want to participate (21 answered out of around 30 young people who were sent the survey). This tells me that it shouldn’t be particularly challenging to get 16-20 year olds to engage with the campaign, and it could be useful if I cater for this audience through the use of young trends, social media (which young people tend to engage with) and teen friendly phrasing on posters. The fact that very few people over the age of 60 participated could be some indication of their lack of interest in the subject, however there are one or two flaws in this finding. One of which is the fact that fewer elderly people have access to the internet, meaning that they can’t participate in the survey. The other flaw in this finding is the fact that I am socially connected to very few elderly people, meaning that I really don’t have any way to contact them and request their participation. Overall, the fact that elderly people are not particularly socially connected makes them a much harder target for socially action campaign work, so I’ll rule them out of my target audience.

These qualitative responses have allowed me to gain opinionated responses from my survey audience, rather than making them just tick a box (which would limit their ability to project opinionated responses). In this particular example, I’ve found that a great deal of my audience associate words such as hunger, money, homelessness etc. with poverty (which was as I had expected). Another finding was the fact that many associated poverty in general with foreign countries rather than the UK. The first finding shows me that my audience in general have some understanding of what the word poverty actually means, and have been somewhat educated on the topic, whether it be through school or the media. I can use this to my advantage when creating my campaign, as I won’t necessarily need to define what poverty is to my audience, but instead can focus on actually changing their aptitudes through shock value images etc. My second finding, the fact that many associate poverty with foreign countries, gives me an indication that many of the survey participants may be somewhat oblivious or unaware of the severity of some of the UK’s poverty. I can use this information when targeting my project at UK poverty, in order to create awareness to it, focusing on British facts and figures, and getting in touch with other British organizations in order to benefit the campaign.

In this second qualitative question, I’ve learnt a lot about my audience in general and their financial situations, as well as how they perceive the effects of poverty. The majority of my audience have said that they are in no way effected by poverty personally. This gives me an indication of the fact that not only are they living comfortably, but also the fact that they don’t feel that poverty is something which they need to be concerned about the effects of. Some of the respondents however, managed to mention the fact that on some levels, although not directly, poverty has an impact on them (whether it be emotionally or financially). Despite this, the fact that so many actually felt that poverty had no impact on them, is a clear indication of the fact that they are either oblivious to the damage it is creating, or simply don’t really care because it doesn’t directly effect them. I can use this to my advantage when creating a target audience, of those who are oblivious of the impact poverty can have on us as a community, and to open eyes in order to make people understand that it has an effect on us all. Unfortunately, there were one or two participants who attempted to sabotage my research and abuse the opportunity for qualitative feedback with answers such as ‘I laugh in the face of poverty’ and ‘ref u gee’. Luckily these answers are heavily outweighed by the useful responses of my other participants, meaning that I don’t have to worry about them ruining my findings.

What I’ve found from this question is that the majority of my audience are not often exposed to poverty (around 42%), and around 40% said that they were somewhat exposed to poverty. Only 19% said yes. These results tell me that almost all of my audience have either little or no exposure to poverty, and this is probably down to the fact that I’ve distributed my survey to a predominantly middle class audience of friends and family, and the fact that most of my participants are from York (which is an affluent city with low poverty levels in comparison to other cities in the UK). What I can learn from this is that people from affluent cities such as York generally will have very little or no exposure to poverty, so making sure that people from areas like this support the campaign will be crucial in order to change attitudes. The fact that these people aren’t directly exposed to poverty means that it will be harder to get them involved in the campaign due to the fact they don’t see quite how bad it can be and the impact it has, but adopting shock value tactics when creating my campaign should help to counteract this problem and open my audience’s eyes in order to get them involved.

These results show that the majority of participants (about 55%) feel that more media coverage on the issue of poverty is necessary, about 35% feel that coverage is somewhat adequate, whilst only 10% feel that there is adequate coverage. Straight off the bat, what this tells me is that my audience don’t see enough media coverage for themselves in order to gain a firm and extensive knowledge on the topic. Only 10% actually feel that there is adequate coverage, which leaves the rest with less information than is needed. This basically means that enough awareness isn’t raised, so anyone who watches the news every day but doesn’t follow charities which cover poverty awareness simply will not have any idea of what’s going on within our country. Using this data, I can conclude the fact that much more needs to be done in order to raise awareness and change attitudes towards poverty, and that mainstream media simply isn’t helping the cause. This for me adds extra importance to my campaign and what it stands for in order to change perceptions. An example of how I could really try and change these statistics could be in an attempt to infiltrate a mainstream media source (in this case likely to be a local newspaper) to boost the media presence of the topic of British poverty. One possible flaw in these results is the fact that many young people (who account for the vast majority of my survey audience) aren’t really exposed enough to media outlets such as news channels or newspaper articles to form a worthwhile opinion on whether or not there is adequate media coverage, and this was one consideration I had to think about when analyzing these results, but as a counter argument, these young people are much more likely to be exposed to internet based media broadcasts via social media outlets etc.

These results show that the majority of participants (around 55%) feel that British documentaries covering the topic of poverty tend to be unfair and not accurate representations of poverty stricken communities. Furthermore, 35% of participants were unsure on whether they are fair representations, whilst 7% answered somewhat, and only 5% answered yes. What these statistics show about my audience is that a great deal are unsure of whether or not they can trust documentary representations of poverty, meaning they are left unsure on how much truth there is behind these documentaries. This statistic encourages me to want to make sure there is a level of trust between me and my audience when creating my campaign, in order to sustain a more truthful and accurate representation of the issue of poverty in general as to steer away from these negative and untrustworthy media representations. The fact that such a great amount of my audience marked ‘I’m not sure’ also leads me to believe that my audience are somewhat ignorant on the topic, and they lack the knowledge to understand whether these documentaries are twisted perceptions or realistic, so by choosing to reinforce my work with factual evidence I can aim to counteract this level of confusion.

These statistics are pretty extreme, yet at the same time not particularly surprising. They show that a massive amount of my audience (almost 80%) think that more could be done by the government to reduce levels of poverty, whilst a miniscule 2% feel the government couldn’t be doing any more. Some of my audience have mixed opinions, with 15% feeling that the government could somewhat reduce poverty levels, and 5% being unsure. These statistics speak for themselves really, and with sure a unanimous amount of my audience believing that more could be done, there’s no doubt that they feel that there needs to be some change. This backs up my previous beliefs that our current government simply doesn’t do enough for those who are effected by poverty, and it pleases me to see that my audience have similar political beliefs despite many claiming to not be effected by poverty in any way. I can work with my audience in order to change these statistics, and hopefully by the end of my project (if not on a national level but a global level) more will be done by authorities to counteract the impact poverty is having.

In this question I have received another complete majority on whether or not my audience is living comfortably in terms of food and water supply, with 93% saying yes, and 5% saying no (which may well have been from 2 the members of my audience who aimed to sabotage the research). These facts were as to be expected, especially considering the geo-demographic of the majority of my audience, and this basically goes hand in hand with the ‘are you affected by poverty personally?’ question, and further backs up the fact that my audience are not connected with poverty on this personal level. It speaks for itself really, and means that I really have to consider how I’m going to engage my campaign’s audience whom are disassociated with poverty on so many levels, and do not feel it’s effects. This was to be expected as the main aim of my campaign is to change the attitudes of those who are the LEAST effected rather than those who are.

The majority of my audience work as an ‘authoritative figure/part manager, teacher, PR, police officer, nurse etc.’ (41%) whilst about 26% work as a ‘company manager, executive, doctor, lawyer, company director, accountant etc.’ These are two higher ranking social classes (middle class and upper-middle class), and account for about 67% of my audience. The lower ranking social classes (lower middle class, skilled working class and working class) account for the other 33% of my audience. These results are not surprising to me, as the majority of my friends come from middle class backgrounds, and my parents friends (who participated in the survey) are predominately middle class. The results correlate with previous responses, in that those members of my audience who are ‘not directly affected by poverty’, or ‘do not encounter poverty on a regular basis’ are also likely to of a higher social grade. I will use this information in order to further benefit my understanding on which social grades are more or less effected by poverty, and will choose to target the higher social grades with my campaign, in order to create a well rounded poverty aware local community that doesn’t exclude people based on social grade,

Example of correlation…

These graph results have been filtered in order to spot patterns between audience characteristics. On the left are middle class and upper middle class respondent’s answers to the question on exposure to poverty. As you can see, 55% of these members of my audience were not exposed to poverty at. On the right, the results are filtered to display the working class and skilled working class members of my audience. The results are much different, as only a mere 12% said that they were not often exposed to poverty. These results are an demonstration of correlation between lower social grades an poverty exposure, and from this data I can back up my point on the importance of getting people from higher social grades involved in my campaign.

Summary…To summarise, despite one or two members of my audience not taking the survey seriously, the vast majority of the results I’ve collected have been extremely useful in allowing me to not only gain a great understanding of my audience, but also to understand how I can cater for the various demographics, and what considerations I will need to make before undergoing the production of my campaign. For example, I've learnt that significantly less people form the middle classes are exposed to poverty than those of working classes, meaning that getting the middle classes involves and engaged with my campaign will be more difficult but also more important. This is one of the many findings that will aid my campaign greatly. By analysing data trends I have been able to see clear correlations between different members of my audience, which will allow me to really gain a good understanding of poverty and people’s attitudes towards it. Although there are factors which could have potentially made results less accurate, I’ve aimed to address them all and compensate for them with counter arguments when analysing the survey.