From kimono to keitai; research Japanese facts and figures through translated opinion polls and surveys.
Pink Tentacle has posted the first “…of the Year” post for this year, with the sixty candidate words for Jiyu Kokuminsha’s Word of the Year candidates, to be annouced on the first of December. Very much worth a read for a potted history of Japan and the media for 2008.
Read more on: Jiyu Kokuminsha,pink tentacle,word of the yearAs a bonus for today, here’s a second silly survey from goo Ranking, this time looking at what hosework Japanese people find the most bother, for both men and women.
Between the 25th and 28th of July 2008 1,072 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.3% of the sample were male, 5.7% in their teens, 14.4% in their twenties, 31,0% in their thirties, 28.1% in their forties, 10.5% in their fifties, and 10.4% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.
At home I do and enjoy most of the washing of dishes, throwing out the rubbish, hoovering, and garden maintenance, but I hate the most doing the toilet, but luckily my wife takes most care of that. Cleaning the air conditioner is probably the most bother as we have a high ceiling and some of the air conditioner covers are a bit broken!
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After mentioning in a survey earlier this week about how smoking was my second-favourite survey topic, along comes this survey from DMSDRIVE Research Inc on my favourite topic in Japan, tooth care, in particular electric toothbrushes. As a bonus, this survey also touches on the use of this equipment by smokers.
Between the 20th and 27th of August 2008 9,029 memebers of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. 51.6% of the sample were female, 1.2% in their teens, 13.4% in their twenties, 33.8% in their thirties, 29.9% in their forties, 14.9% in their fifties, and 6.8% aged sixty or older. As a bonus statistic, 27.2% were current smokers, 19.3% ex-smokers, and 53.5% had never smoked.
Note that Sunstar make cheap-and-cheerful battery-operated toothbrushes that they sell alongside their manual counterparts in almost all pharmacies and supermarkets, where as all the other manufacturers make proper brushes.
I have a Braun Oral-B that I bought with points from a credit card, but I only use it at the weekends as cleaning and drying after every use during the week is too much bother!
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I’m not really up on the issues myself regarding national testing, but I am against the whole culture of testing in Japan. I am all for publishing the results of regular examinations, but not tests for the sake of tests. However, I would appear to be very much in the minority according to the results of this survey into national educational level testing, conducted by goo Research in conjunction with the Mainichi Shimbun.
Between the 17th and 19th of October 2008 1,075 mmbers of the goo Research monitor group aged twenty or older completed a private online questionnaire. No further demographics information was provided.
I’m a bit confused in Q1 why there is an answer “both the school and local authority level”, as it is a trivial task to take the school results and sum them up by area. Also, Q1SQ1 and Q1SQ2 should really be multiple choice questions and there are no “don’t knows”, so I suspect there has been some post-processing of the results for presentation.
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Second only to teeth, smoking is one of my favourite subjects to cover on this blog, so I hope you too enjoy this recent survey from MyVoice on this very subject.
Over the first five days of October 2008 14,473 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 14% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older. Note that since the legal smoking age is 20 years old in Japan, no teenagers took part in this survey.
Note that taspo is an identity card that is needed in order to operate most cigarette machines to serve as proof that the person is holding a card issued to someone over 20.
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Just a quick note that Danny Choo recently posted on cooking habits of Japanese men as reported on by Macromill via the Nikkei Shimbun.
I may translate this survey in full in the near future as I do find the reported 50% who cook every week quite a bit higher than what I would expect, so I want to see how the figures were derived.
Read more on: danny choo,food,macromill,nikkei shimbunI feel the biggest home-grown problem that will have a major effect on the Japan of the future is the combination of the ageing population and the drop in the birth rate, as some time soon Japan will seriously have to consider how they approach the lack of workers and the explosion in elderly people looking for government care. This recent survey from MyVoice looked in particular at the decrease in the birth rate aspect of the problem.
Over the first five days of September 2008 15,495 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 36% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% in their fifties. I’ve just noticed that in the free comment column they have people up to the age of 73 answering, so from now on I’ll tag the top bracket of all MyVoice panels as fifty or older, not just as fifties.
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Recently the Cabinet Office Japan sponsored a very detailed survey into the public’s perception of public transport safety.
3,000 people over the age of twenty were randomly selected from resident lists from all over the country. Between the 24th of July and 3rd of August 2008 face-to-face interviews took place. 39.3% refused or were not resident at that address, etc, so in total 1,822 people completed the survey. 53.9% of the sample were female, 8.1% in their twenties, 14.6% in their thirties, 17.5% in their forties, 20.8% in their fifties, 21.5% in their sixties, 13.0% in their seventies, and 4.4% aged eighty or older.
In Q8 I find the actions classified as “unsafe behaviour” quite surprising. Dashing into closing train doors and getting stuck in the door is dangerous, but checking in at the last minute is hardly unsafe, just impolite at worse.
Talking of unsafe behaviour, I flew trans-Pacific with NorthWest a couple of days ago in an exit seat with two of the crew opposite, but one of them grabbed her mobile and started checking her email during the final approach! They then went as far as to tut quietly at a passenger whose mobile rung as the plane taxied.
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In Japan adulthood is 20 years old, but there is a bit of a debate going on at the moment regarding changing this. A recent survey conducted by the Cabinet Office Japan into the age of majority looked at some of the issues surrounding this topic.
Between the 10th and 27th of July 2008 5,000 randomly selected members of the public over the aged of 18 were interviewed face-to-face. 3,060 people were successfully interviewed; 53.2% of the sample were female, 1.4% were aged 18 or 19, 8.8% were in their twenties, 14.9% in their thirties, 17.8% in their forties, 20.9% in their fifties, 20.8% in their sixties, and 15.4% aged seventy or older. 75.0% were married, 9.5% divorced or widowed, and 15.5% not married. 10.4% had pre-school children, 15.4% elementary or middle-school children, 6.9% high school, 7.0% university or college, etc, 0.5% post graduate, and 50.2% had children finished with education and now employed or otherwise. Finally, 24.2% did not have any children.
This is a very interesting survey that perhaps reinforces prejudices or stereotypes that we hold of the Japanese. The most surprising figure for me was the 10% or more who thought the law is the law, so as an individual citizen one cannot think of changing it. However, if you asked similar questions in other countries, what sort of figure would you get there?
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Ahh, I could write pages and pages on this topic, but as I like getting paid every month I’d better keep quiet and just stick to the facts in this survey from Marsh Inc that was reported on by japan.internet.com on the subject of corporate information leaks. For reference, just last week I looked at leaks from the home environment.
Between the 4th and 8th of September 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group who used PCs completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and 20:20:20:20:20 between those in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and sixty or older.
We have some new rules in our office that have been introduced over the last couple of weeks, which I do recognise will increase data security and reduce the risk of accidental leaks, but… I can’t really qualify that “but” without risking falling foul of said data security rules! Ah well, I’ll have a fun team meeting tomorrow where I plan to point out an issue or two and generally play at awkward buggers.
In Q2, I suspect one can read “can’t answer” as “yes”! Indeed, the sample size for Q2SQ indicates that the “can’t answer” people did regardless.
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