In the run-up to the general election, surveys of British opinion have been showing a “perception gap” over public services—a divergence between the personal experience people report and their views of the trend in the quality of services generally. While they are likely to be satisfied with their local school or hospital, they regard the education system and the NHS as a whole more negatively.
This may be partly because of optimism—people (and companies) regularly expect their own economic prospects to be better than those for the country as a whole. But there is evidence to suggest that people have more negative views about broader social change than is justified by the facts. This may, in turn, be a function of the “bad news” bias of news values, at a time when more people depend exclusively on the news media for political information and are less likely to use other sources—such as trade unions, political parties or churches.
There is an identifiable correlation between on the one hand the amount and accuracy of the information available to people on political issues, and on the other their opinions about those issues. A recent example was the debate on student tuition fees last year, when surveys showed that those who were most familiar with the detail of the proposal were more likely to support it. Of those aware that there were no up-front fees, that interest rates on loans were very low and that students from poor families would not miss out, a large majority supported the scheme, compared with only three in ten overall.
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