The Seven Principles of Public Life - ESDS

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Differences reported in the commentary between sub-groups within the sample are either statistically significant at the 95 per cent confidence level 6 or are judged by the researchers to reflect real differences, on the basis of similar findings elsewhere in the study. 6 See the Technical Appendix an explanation of sampling errors, confidence intervals and design effects. 22 BMRB International Report: Survey of public attitudes towards conduct in public life
1 The political context and influences on public opinion In this opening chapter we discuss some of the issues and problems that arise when asking questions about standards in public life. We also describe the political landscape against which the survey was set and consider how external influences such as the media and contemporaneous political events might have had a bearing on the views expressed by respondents, looking at what respondents themselves felt had influenced their opinions, and to what extent these perceptions are likely to be valid. 1.1 Asking questions about standards One of the difficulties facing the researcher designing a study of public attitudes towards standards in public life lies in how to ask questions on a subject about which most participants will at best have a layman’s knowledge and at worst know nothing at all. For example, there is little point asking what people think of the intricacies of the rules surrounding conflicts of interest. While a survey about crime can reasonably ask people to say what they think is a suitable punishment for burglary, since the subject is grounded in their day-to-day sphere of experience, it would not make sense to ask them what punishment should be levied against an MP who has failed to declare a gift or against a local councillor who has helped to push through a friend’s planning application: the general public does not have enough knowledge about the context surrounding these issues to make a reasoned judgement. In general this means that questions have to be kept quite simple. For example, it is reasonable to ask people how important they think it is that politicians tell the truth or that they act in the public interest rather than in their own, or whether MPs should listen to their conscience or to their party leader when deciding how to vote in parliament. Even with questions like these, however, there are pitfalls. People’s answers can, for example, be coloured by what they see as being socially desirable responses; and what they say is important can be a camouflage for what really drives their perceptions of politicians and other public office holders. It is particularly problematic to ask people how they perceive public office holders to behave in practice and even more so to ask their opinions on whether formal accountability mechanisms are functioning effectively. Even a well informed respondent would have difficulty saying how widespread a specific type of misconduct was amongst a particular group of public office holders or how frequently misdemeanours went unexposed. There is, after all, no objective measure of the incidence of misconduct on which public perceptions might be based. The best a survey of this nature can do is to ensure that people BMRB International Report: Survey of public attitudes towards conduct in public life 23
Page 1 and 2: Survey of public attitudes towards
Page 3 and 4: List of Tables Table 1 Key events d
Page 5 and 6: The Seven Principles of Public Life
Page 7 and 8: Acknowledgements The Authors would
Page 9 and 10: Executive summary Introduction In M
Page 11 and 12: 3 Public expectations and prioritie
Page 13 and 14: Figure 2 Statements attributed to a
Page 15 and 16: 6 Views on public sector recruitmen
Page 17 and 18: 9 Overall perceptions of standards
Page 19 and 20: Introduction This report presents t
Page 21 and 22: Stage 1 research The Stage 1 resear
Page 23 and 24: Research methods Stage 2: Questionn
Page 25: Chapters 3 and 4 address large part
Page 29 and 30: More than eight in ten respondents
Page 31 and 32: When respondents were asked to say
Page 33 and 34: In order to obtain a measure of the
Page 35 and 36: In their place are responses associ
Page 37 and 38: 2 Trust in public office holders Th
Page 39 and 40: featured strongly as a perceived in
Page 41 and 42: 3 Public expectations and prioritie
Page 43 and 44: 3.2 Expectations of national politi
Page 45 and 46: It is clear, then, that all of thes
Page 47 and 48: Table 5 Importance of specific beha
Page 49 and 50: 4 Perceptions of the behaviour of p
Page 51 and 52: Figure 6 Proportion of government m
Page 53 and 54: The attributes on which MPs perform
Page 55 and 56: 4.2 Perceptions of the behaviour of
Page 57 and 58: 4.2.1 Honesty Figure 8 shows how th
Page 59 and 60: 4.2.3 Use of public money Figure 10
Page 61 and 62: 4.2.5 Summary A consistent pattern
Page 63 and 64: 5 MPs and voting in parliament The
Page 65 and 66: espondents thought that MPs should
Page 67 and 68: that they had an affinity with a po
Page 69 and 70: Table 9 What people think most MPs
Page 71 and 72: 6 Views on public sector recruitmen
Page 73 and 74: to public sector appointments: each
Page 75 and 76: While these results might suggest a
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Respondents who said that they knew
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The results show that there is a wi
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7 Media scrutiny and the private li
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8 Public office holders and account
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Figure 20 Confidence that wrongdoin
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The Committee recommends measures t
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9 Overall perceptions of standards
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This is illustrated in Table 11, wh
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• Those with a higher education q
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Table 13 Rating of standards of con
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Table 14 Rating of standards of con
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10 Summary and conclusions The purp
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politicians with being competent an
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References Bromley, C., and Curtice
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Technical appendix Research methods
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Stage 3: The national survey The su
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and that 65 per cent of selected ad
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Generally speaking, weights are cal
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Agree that government ministers hav
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• whether or not read one of the
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COMMITTEE ON STANDARDS IN PUBLIC LI
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SECTION B - EXPECTATIONS, PRIORITIE
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5. They explain the reasons for the
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READ OUT Now thinking about , senio
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Honest Dishonest 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Dedi
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ASK ALL SHUFFLE PACK F and SORT BOA
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SHOW CARD E ASK FOR EACH TYPE OF PU
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B17. SHOW CARD I i. How confident d
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SECTION C. CONTEXTUAL QUESTIONS SHO
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ASK ALL SHOW CARD N C6. I’m now g
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IF ‘YES’ at C13. C14. Which par
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NS-SEC QUESTIONS on socio-economic
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[ASK IF Work = Yes OR QCOMBINE =1 o
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ASK ALL SHOW CARD EE - LARGE D4 Sta
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ASK ALL SHOWCARD FF - LARGE D8. Do
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