Give yourselves a hand
Usually when I write about a survey story that gives no details, it’s because the survey is bogus. Today, Stuff has a story about a genuine survey that says nice things about Kiwis. The World Giving Index has NZ in second place, with a score of 57%, and Stuff says this means “At least 57 per cent of Kiwis give either their money or time to some sort of charity.”
In fact, the World Giving Index is an average over three questions from the Gallup World Poll, a survey that does face-to-face interviews with a random sample of people from every country in the world (with a few exceptions where it’s not feasible). The questions are
Have you done any of the following in the past month?
- Donated money to a charity?
- Volunteered your time to an organisation?
- Helped a stranger, or someone you didn’t know who needed help?
NZ scores 63%, 39%, 69% respectively, so the 57% giving money or time to a charity reported by Stuff is an underestimate.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Obviously 57 is just the mean of 63, 39 & 69.
That’s probably a reasonable way to combine them for the purpose of ranking generosity, but you’re right, it underestimates “X% do one or the other”.
I’d be interested to know if there is a correlation between the three activities; that is, are they all outcomes of a generosity trait which some people have and some don’t (so maybe as low as 69% do at some of those 3 things, and probably more than one); or are they independent (in which case around 93% were doing at least one of those 3 things); or are they “alternatives”, where each person will tend to do only one (in which case, you’re going to get darn close to 100% doing at least one — but probably only one).
12 years ago
I’d expect that people who volunteer for a charity would be much more likely to also donate to that charity.
Giving money and helping a stranger, I have no idea — especially as it’s self-report, which might increase the correlation.
12 years ago