Your stupid piece of journalism for today:
"Birmingham is being described as a holiday hotspot despite polls saying it is among the rudest cities and less important than Manchester."
There are three stories here. The first is that some television people have come to Birmingham to make a show about the whys and wherefores of coming here for a holiday. To the best of my knowledge this kind of program has been around for a while and frequently features people coming to cities all over the place.
The second is that in a poll worthy of The Metro "newspaper" Birmingham came 9th, above Liverpool, in a ranking by politeness. This survey was commissioned by Somerfield, a supermarket, and involved 1,500 people. It was undertaken "online". Nothing else is known about the methodology but it's fair to assume it wasn't rigorously scientific.
The third is that in a BBC show cashing in on the ever so tiresome Second City debate (and yes, it was tiresome way before this) a survey of 1000 people resulted in 48% saying Manchester was better and 40% disagreeing. No news on the other 12%. This, apparently, is conclusive proof that Birmingham sucks and Manchester, floppy hats and tambourines and all, rules.
The article goes on to say that Birmingham, while it might have had a bad reputation in the past, is much better than it was thanks to the regeneration. Which is nice to know. There was me thinking it had always been a nice place when in fact it used to be horrible. Consider me corrected.
But check out that opening paragraph again, specifically the word "despite".
TV bod 1: "Let's see. Where haven't we covered in the UK yet?"
TV bod 2: "Well, there's Birmingham. It's quite nice, you know. And given that everyone thinks its a bit shit we might be able to swing some coverage."
TV bod 1: "But hang on. My psychic powers predict that in the week before we broadcast this pre-recorded program there'll be a couple of dubious polls with statistically insignificant samples declaring Birmingham to be a horrible place. Do we dare go against that?"
TV bod 2: "Hell, despite what these not-yet-published findings say I think we should. Let's be brave! Let's be cutting edge!"
TV bod 1: "Okay, but we're taking a hell of a risk."
The program in question is on BBC1 in 20 minutes and despite myself I'm probably going to watch it...
"Birmingham is being described as a holiday hotspot despite polls saying it is among the rudest cities and less important than Manchester."
There are three stories here. The first is that some television people have come to Birmingham to make a show about the whys and wherefores of coming here for a holiday. To the best of my knowledge this kind of program has been around for a while and frequently features people coming to cities all over the place.
The second is that in a poll worthy of The Metro "newspaper" Birmingham came 9th, above Liverpool, in a ranking by politeness. This survey was commissioned by Somerfield, a supermarket, and involved 1,500 people. It was undertaken "online". Nothing else is known about the methodology but it's fair to assume it wasn't rigorously scientific.
The third is that in a BBC show cashing in on the ever so tiresome Second City debate (and yes, it was tiresome way before this) a survey of 1000 people resulted in 48% saying Manchester was better and 40% disagreeing. No news on the other 12%. This, apparently, is conclusive proof that Birmingham sucks and Manchester, floppy hats and tambourines and all, rules.
The article goes on to say that Birmingham, while it might have had a bad reputation in the past, is much better than it was thanks to the regeneration. Which is nice to know. There was me thinking it had always been a nice place when in fact it used to be horrible. Consider me corrected.
But check out that opening paragraph again, specifically the word "despite".
TV bod 1: "Let's see. Where haven't we covered in the UK yet?"
TV bod 2: "Well, there's Birmingham. It's quite nice, you know. And given that everyone thinks its a bit shit we might be able to swing some coverage."
TV bod 1: "But hang on. My psychic powers predict that in the week before we broadcast this pre-recorded program there'll be a couple of dubious polls with statistically insignificant samples declaring Birmingham to be a horrible place. Do we dare go against that?"
TV bod 2: "Hell, despite what these not-yet-published findings say I think we should. Let's be brave! Let's be cutting edge!"
TV bod 1: "Okay, but we're taking a hell of a risk."
The program in question is on BBC1 in 20 minutes and despite myself I'm probably going to watch it...
7 Comments:
Pete I am not sure you want to say statistically insignificant samples. A difference of 8% with a sample of over 1000 is definitely statistically significant. It is also a large enough sample and it looks like they took a fair bit of care to randomly select people from different areas (though I can't say for certain since they only published their results and not their methods). The area where you could potentially criticize them is the validity. What questions they asked and whether they mean what they claim they mean.
The results are available here just below the picture of sir digby.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/westmidlands/index.shtml
The rudeness survey appears to be self report which makes it hard to criticize. If you say you're rude then you probably are.
What tosh! The Birmingam vs. Manchester survey is laughably statistically insignificant. Asking only 1000 people for a national survey is, I hate to say, piss poor; especially when you take in margins of error and account for don't knows. For a start the survey was commissioned by BBC North West and the breakdown of respondents asked was 325 northeners, 274 midlanders and 401 southerners. So that's a bit skewed for a start. What's more, if you wanted to do the survey properly you would ask for an unprompted response rather than give a cold choice. Don't be dazzled by all those tables SRB, they actually reveal the real story here: crap survey, cheap bit of journalism. If you're going to pull interesting stuff out of this then it appears that the professional classes (Social class ABs) just about favour Brum over Manchester which I kinda like since my job is to influence those with money to spend to spend it in Brum and the Midlands. So just like any survey this is spinnable and I'm happy to spin it up for Brum.
As an aside I watched the Holiday programme tonight and I kind of liked the piece on Brum, it covered a lot of ground and will no doubt persuade a few more concert-goers or conference delegates to extend their stay when they're here. I also like any where I can get excited about footage of the old Bingley Hall - terrific!
Dave Harte, Digital Central
srb:
I should probably qualify that. I personally don't think a sample of 1000 people is enough to form any meaningful conclusions, which is why these sorts of polls annoy me. I appreciate that scientifically and with the right controls this can be useful but not when it comes to this sort of nonsense.
The combined populations of Birmingham and Manchester (cities, not regions) is 1.5 million. That BBC survey, if we assume they just covered the two cities (which I don't think they did) means they got the opinions of 0.06% of the people. If you take it nationally it's 0.002%. That's meaningless.
In my opinion.
Worth noting that the Holiday program was very impressive. Birmingham Marketing must be wetting their pants with glee.
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the Holiday programme was fairly good, he didn't venture too far from the Mailbox tho' did he? We're not just shopping surely...
I've been ranting about the whole recent media debacle, over at B:iNs, and it's fairly worn me out. (Conclusion: journalists are easily led, some of it is our fault probably).
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