Swans fans the most accepting of indigenous culture

[ShockOfHair]

I'm surprised this hasn't had more publicity. Ahead of Indigenous Round is release of a survey of fans' attitudes to indigenous people and culture, club by club.

You can imagine it wouldn't look good for the club who finishes bottom.

But not our problem - Swans fans are in fact the most accepting of indigenous culture.

The latest findings from Roy Morgan Research, which coincide with National Reconciliation Week, show that 77.5 per cent of Swans fans agree that Aboriginal culture is an essential component of Australian society.

The Swans are closely followed by the Western Bulldogs (77.3%), Hawthorn (76.7%) and Geelong Cats (73.0%).

Across all 18 clubs 71 per cent of Australia?s 7,611,000 AFL supporters believe Aboriginal culture is important, which is slightly above the national average of 69 per cent.



Yes, Collingwood rank below the national average, but they're ahead of seven other clubs, including the Suns, who finish bottom with a score of 61.3%.

[CJK]

Great to see.

Well played Swans fans

[R-1]

It's interesting but the question is stupidly leading and the figures are close enough that a lot is statistical noise.

For starters, there's margins of error. After checking how to work this out with a stats guru friend, I did the maths and the gap between the top 7 clubs is not statistically significant. We can't say the Swans result is meaningfully higher than Carlton's. Likewise, the gap between the bottom 6 clubs (Gold Coast to St Kilda) isn't significant either.

More to the point, the question "Aboriginal culture is an essential component of Australian society" could be dusagreed for several contradictory reasons.

I could be answering "no" because although I think it should be an essential component, I believe in practice that it isn't - that mainstream Australia doesn't meet that standard of valuing Aboriginal culture.

I could also merely believe it's important but not essential.

I could also rather ignorantly believe Aboriginal culture has been effectively destroyed and isn't an essential component any more for that reason.

Or I could be a racist and not think Aboriginal culture matters at all.

But hey "Swans fans least racist" is a fun headline at least.

[liz]

Agree with all of the above R1. It's too ambiguously worded a question to draw too many conclusions from.

[erica]

How many people did they survey and how did they do it? Did any RWO-ers get surveyed? First I heard about it was when I saw the results.

[R-1]

How many people did they survey and how did they do it? Did any RWO-ers get surveyed? First I heard about it was when I saw the results.

Roy Morgan's cited sample size was 7500, that's the subset of people they surveyed who indicated they followed an AFL team. This was presumably collected across a period of months as is their usual method for thse things.

What makes professional polling companies valuable is that unlike a random online poll, every respondent is demographically weighted to accurately reflect the Australian popultion. So if you're 25, female, from NSW, you'll be taken as representing that group in Australia and weighted accordingly.

7500 is quite good for survey purposes (margin of error on a 50% figure estimated from a sample of 7500 is maybe +/- 1%, meaning a figure of 50% is very likely to be between 49% and 51% in reality).

For comparison, political opinion polls typically have a sample of about a thousand which is good enough to get the Two-Party Preferred within +/- 3%. At the other end of the scale a Bureau of Statistics survey might sample 25000 or more.

But when you break 7500 it down into 18 separate club samples and try to compare each club, the sample is still only a few hundred for each and the margin of error gets a lot bigger again.

[CJK]

7500 is a huge sample size - most business decisions are done on around 1000 if lucky.