Wednesday, 20 March 2013

You probably don’t know your neighbours, it says here

Research reported by the Big Lunch claims that more than 50 per cent of respondents ‘don’t know their neighbours’, with one in four ‘having no idea what their names are’.

There’s no way of finding out what this means, as there is no press release on the website, and no indication of who carried out the research or how the questions were worded. Of course it’s part of the BL process of cranking up its publicity, which is fair enough; and it gives the Daily Mail something to put in its columns, which maybe can’t be helped.

All I can offer is a quick comparison with some previous ‘findings’, noting the three tentative conclusions I drew a few years ago that

  • about 90% of us enjoy good relationships with our neighbours and speak to them often
  • about 5% of us have no contact with our neighbours
  • there's no consensus on whether neighbourliness is in decline.

I could point out once again that the phrase ‘to know your neighbours’ needs a bit of unpacking if it is to be helpful; and that knowing names is not the same as recognition, which is what underpins neighbourliness.

I can also promise to try and do another mini-analysis of collected ‘findings’ from sources like this, because they do have a fascination and possibly some lessons. But it remains the case that if organisations don’t feel able to reveal the source of such eccentric conclusions, their credibility will need rescuing.


20 Mar 2013 11:14:07 | Neighbourhood relations

2 Comments

A helpful corrective Kevin, as I just noted on my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/rethinkingchildhood . Like you (I think) I'm not saying whether the Big Lunch people are right or wrong. But "show us the data" - absolutely!

Posted by: Tim Gill | Friday, 22 March 2013 at 10:27

Thanks for this Tim and for the link. I find I have about 50 survey 'reports' referring to neighbourliness - mostly just press releases or summaries, but some academic or published by market research companies themselves. The more there are - preferably with credible evidence - the more there might be to learn from them. If I do an analysis, should I try just issuing a press release and keeping the data to myself...?

Posted by: Kevin Harris | Friday, 22 March 2013 at 17:16

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