WONDERFUL things, surveys. If you have a point to prove just round up a few chums, ask them some leading questions and publicise the findings.
OK, so that’s a cynical view — nine respondents out of ten say so — but in the public sector surveys are a powerful tool for drawing attention to a given subject.
Take sexually abusive insults, for example. Almost a fifth of primary school teachers have been on the receiving end, says a teaching union whose survey results feature in The Times Educational Supplement (Dec 1).
It’s the turn of political scientists to be surveyed in The Times Higher Education Supplement (Dec 1). In a similar survey three years ago, politics academics were a miserable bunch. Nearly two thirds of