Sunday 2 November 2014

Silhouettes in the Sun

The shadows of my family on a walkway make silhouettes at Kings Canyon in 2006.
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What the French Know About France: Ipsos Australia has just released a report called 'The Perils of Perception'. It's a study of what people know about their country. The study covers 14 countries, including France, Australia, Britain, USA, Sweden, Belgium and Canada. It makes very interesting reading. Click on the link to see the report. The questionnaire that people answered to supply the data which the report is based on is also available. I strongly suggest you do the questionnaire first, then look at the report.

6 comments:

The Beaver said...

Funny I did better of France than Canada :-)

Carolyn said...

I did worst with my home country, best with France, and in between with Great Britain, which was still several points ahead of my home-country score.

Susan said...

Beaver & Carolyn: Which did you do first though? Once you've done one you are kind of primed for what the answers are going to be. And also, people's misconceptions about their home country is kind of the point. More exposure to tabloid press whether you like it or not about your home country. You are most probably getting better quality info about France because you seek it out is my guess. I did worst with France, best with Australia, in between with GB.

GaynorB said...

Very interesting. I did better with the UK than with France. Completely agree about tabloid press involvement in forming misconceptions.



Ken Broadhurst said...

I got the same score for both the US and France. Pretty scary. We are badly informed, or not curious enough.

Susan said...

Ken: What I don't understand is how so many people get the percentage unemployed wrong. Of all the questions asked, that is the one you figure you see regularly in the news. Some of the questions are difficult to answer because you don't know what the criteria for them is eg how did they calculate the religious numbers in France since officially one is not allowed to ask what religion a person is? (it is not asked during the census).

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