SWS: Just tracking the facts for years

RECORD-HIGH unemployment among Filipino adults is rising, from 11 million to 14 million in the first quarter of this year.

Of the unemployed, 13 percent voluntarily left their old job, while 12 percent were retrenched; of that 9 percent were laid off and 3 percent did not have their previous contract renewed.

The figures, released by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) this week, were immediately disputed by government pronouncements. The numbers, though, are based on a survey of 1,000 plus Filipino adults (aged 18 and above) on February 20 to 23.

The question (“Are you working at present, not working but used to, or have you never worked?”), has never been changed since 1993, says SWS top honcho Mahar Mangahas, adding that SWS figures are lower than that of government in many occasions.

“SWS has no intention of springing surprises on the government,” he says. “The core indicators are kept unchanged so that comparisons over time will be valid.”

Mangahas points out that the “indicators are not paid for by anyone; their costs are shouldered by the sponsors of other items in the Social Weather survey in much the same way that the costs of a broadsheet’s news are in effect shouldered by its advertisers.”

Since 2005, the SWS survey found unemployment rates at over 20 percent, except for December 2007 when it was 17.5 percent.

Over the past four quarters, adult unemployment was dominated by those who voluntarily left their old work, and those who were retrenched—either by getting laid off or by not having their contracts renewed.

In the latest February 2009 survey, 13 percent of the unemployed left their old jobs voluntarily, 9 percent were laid off, 3 percent had their contracts finished and not renewed, and 3 percent said their employers closed operation (6 percent never worked before at the time of the survey).

The SWS defines unemployment as not working and at the same time looking for work. Those not working but not looking for work—for example, housewives, retired, disabled, students—are excluded from the labor force figures.

Since April 2005, the new government definition included the concept of availability for work; it subtracts those not available for work, even though looking for work, and adds those available for work but not seeking work for the following reasons: tired/believe no work is available, awaiting results of a job application, temporarily ill/disabled, bad weather, and waiting for rehire/job recall.

If the official definition is applied, the unemployment rate among adults 18 years old is 25.9 percent in the SWS February 2009 survey.

It is lower than when computed using the traditional definition, the SWS explains, because the correction for those looking for work but “not truly available” is much larger than the correction for those “actually available” though not looking for work at the moment.

The unemployment numbers is just the latest in a series of surveys. In April, the SWS released other findings based on the First Quarter 2009 Social Weather Survey made during the same period as that for the unemployment survey.

The survey found 32 percent of adult Filipinos expecting their personal quality of life to improve in the next 12 months, and 19 percent expecting it to get worse.

A survey on Self-Rated Poverty, released a week earlier, found that 47 percent—or about 8.7 million of Filipino families—consider themselves as poor; 27 percent put themselves on the borderline and 26 percent consider themselves as not poor.

Other findings based on the First Quarter 2009 Social Weather Survey: 66 percent of voting-age Filipinos oppose amending the Constitution. It also showed that Noli de Castro, Manny Villar, Loren Legarda and Chiz Escudero are the top choices for 2010.

The First Quarter 2009 Social Weather Survey also found hunger has eased to 15.5 percent of families; moderate hunger at 11.1 percent and severe hunger at 4.4 percent.

Functions

According to the SWS, surveys are aimed to provide an independent source of pertinent, accurate, timely and credible data on Philippine economic and social conditions. They are meant to supplement, not duplicate, existing government statistics.

Its surveys began on a se-mestral basis in 1986, a few months after SWS was established the previous year.

Among the regular survey topics are self-rated poverty; quality of life gaining/losing and optimism/pessimism; crime victimization; satisfaction with the performance of government officials and institutions; public opinion on current issues; and electoral prospects.

SWS call itself a self-supporting, non-subsidized, academic institute for survey research on topics of public interest. Subscription fees from clients and commissioned surveys keep it financially independent, it says.

To maintain its credibility as an independent and unbiased source of primary survey data, SWS inhibits itself from conducting proprietary or confidential surveys. Thus, no research sponsor can suppress the use of data generated by the surveys, which it has helped to finance.

In cases of surveys commissioned on highly sensitive topics, the sponsors may obtain a strictly temporary period (three years) of embargo of the data and of research findings.

Thus as a matter of institutional policy, all SWS surveys are ultimately accessible to research without need for prior permission from sponsors. SWS materials, including raw data diskettes, can be made available to all interested parties, without discrimination, at reasonable charges reflecting the cost of production.

Surveys

In recent years, SWS surveys included voting behavior and political stability; communist, military and Muslim rebels; presidential performance and ratings of political personalities; external security, U.S. military bases and foreign relations; poverty, quality of life trends, inflation and general economic sentiment; energy, environment and privatization; agrarian reform, human rights, health, smoking and drinking, sexual practices and so on

The SWS Asian Barometer is the largest comparative survey of attitudes and values toward politics, power, reform, democracy and citizens’ political actions in East Asia.

Cross-national comparative surveys have been implemented in nine East Asian political systems: Hong Kong, Indonesia, Mainland China, Mongolia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.

The SWS Comparative Studies of Electoral Studies is a collaborative program of research among election study teams from around the world. The data are merged into a single, free, public dataset for use in comparative study and cross-level analysis.

The SWS International Social Survey Program tackles a certain topic in unison each year. The international set of data is centrally archived in the University of Cologne, for access by social scientists worldwide; SWS is the only Third World member country.

The SWS is a member of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research based at the University of Michigan. It is the world’s largest social science survey data archive.

It is part of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, the leading educational facility in the field of public opinion. The center promotes public opinion and related survey data in addressing the problems faced by Americans and citizens of other nations.

SWS is also a member of the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) which promotes the right to conduct and publish scientific research on what people think.

In September 2001, WAPOR gave its Helen Dinerman Award, the world’s highest award in public opinion research, to Mangahas for his role “in championing the rights and freedoms of survey researchers in the Philippines.”

The SWS World Values Surveys are designed to analyze how changes in values and attitudes worldwide take shape and through time, re-shape economic, political and social life.

Source: SWS