Survey says: Americans' attitudes towards global health and foreign aid.

In "enough with the lazy advocacy" I referred to a national study of U.S. voters' attitudes towards global health and foreign aid that I directed on behalf of The Gates Foundation.  The outcome of that study went live in late September with the launching of The Living Proof Project. The aim of the campaign is to highlight the positive impact of U.S. global health investments and showcase stories of how foreign aid is empowering people to lead productive, self-sustaining lives.  It's a modest effort right now, but hopefully it will gain momentum over the coming months.  And hopefully it will help usher in a new era of advocacy communications that no longer rely on poverty porn and Western guilt.  In the meantime, I thought I'd share some of the more interesting data points from the research that led to this project.  In Harper's Index style, as follows:

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The ranked importance of global health among 20 possible issues:  15

The ranked importance of sex and violence in the media in the same study:  12

The ranked importance of gas prices:  1

Percentage of voters who recall reading, hearing, or seeing something about global health in the past three months:  60

Percentage who described what they read, saw, or heard as negative:  67

Percentage of voters who think global health problems have gotten worse over the past 20 years:  45

Percentage who think global health problems have improved over the past 20 years: 25

Percentage of voters who think that too much aid money gets wasted because of government corruption in developing countries:  54.5

Percentage of voters who think that too much aid money gets wasted because of inefficiencies in our own government: 46.3

Number of voters who think we should not provide aid because people should learn how to help themselves: 1 in 4

Number of voters who are in favor of the US government providing food, medicine, and money to help people living in the world's poorest places:  3 in 5

Out of nine possible reasons to provide foreign aid, the ranked importance of national security: 8

The ranked importance of improving the image of the U.S. in the world: 7

The ranked importance of helping American businesses by creating new markets:  9

The ranked importance of it's the right thing to do: 1

Number of voters who are uncertain if the aid we provide is effective: 2 in 3

Number of voters who think that the aid we provide is directly reaching the people most in need: 1 in 5

Number of voters who correctly understand what the term global health refers to: 1 in 3

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Study details:  n = 2000. Fielded between June 11-23, 2008.  All demos were quota filled to be nationally representative.  96.4% were registered voters: 21.9% described their political outlook as liberal, 42.8% as moderate, 30.6% as conservative. The margin of error for the total sample is +/- 2.2%.