What’s Your Professional Reputation?
Roy Morgan has just released my favourite poll of theirs – public perceptions of ethics and honesty for various professions. They ask the following question:
As I say different occupations, could you please say — from what you know or have heard – which rating best describes how you, yourself, would rate or score people in various occupations for honesty and ethical standards (Very High, High, Average, Low, Very Low)?
Looking at just the proportion of the public that give either “high” or “very high” ratings, nurses come in top with 89% closely followed by pharamcists on 84%. The lowest for the 20th year running is car salesman on 3%, with Advertising people on 6% then Newspaper Journalists on 9%.
I’ve bundled up the responses in a little app below that traces the high/very high response proportions since 1979 for various professions. The survey came with a smallish sample of 687 where the MoE’s for each can be calculated via The Poll Cruncher if you feel that way inclined. To stop the flash from clogging up the front page, the app is over the fold – just place your mouse over the chart line to see the actual value.
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Cool analysis Poss. Some feedback? I’d like the side axis not to change, so I can flick down through the list and see how they compare easily. Not really important though.
EB
Good on them for polling themselves. It gives me some comfort that my profession rates higher than opinion pollsters.
I’m a bit surprised that accountants rate as high as they do though – particularly given many people rely on them to get a good tax return and structure their finances to achieve this!
Evan, your wish is my command!
The axis has now been set to a fixed value.
Dave, I’m just happy they didnt rate bloggers
Poss, I don’t blame you – I wouldn’t want my ‘profession’ rated either when it includes the likes of Bolt and Ackerman
That’s great for looking at the trends (Hooray for school teachers, it seams i’m getting into the right profession at the right time.)
Interesting that they first polled public servants in 2007, the year of Kevin. I guess it was the first time anyone cared about (former) public servants.
I’m a university lecturer. This profession copped a bit of stick from upon high and in the media between 1996 and 2007 – almost exactly coinciding with a significant upward trend in reputation. So much for the culture wars
I’m a retired teacher – it looks like the trend goes up as relative income goes down!
Yeah, some of the trends are very interesting, particularly some of the ‘shifts’. Engineers got a boost around 2k, buggered if I could guess why.
Another interesting thing is how both State and Federal politicians bottomed out in 1998 – the Year of One Nation – and have experienced modest reputation growth since.
I find the slide of bank managers interesting. Gradual slide with drops in 1990 and 2000 possibly corresponding to recessions?
I also wouldn’t trust nurses. It is well known who is raiding the locked medicine cupboard on the wards.
Maybe it’s easiest to trust professions you don’t know anyone in. Once you hear any of the inside stories it kills the delusions you had of any group of people.
I think the level of trust in nurses, Doctors and Dentists is probably about right but there is probably an element of hope here in that we want to trust these people because we literally put our health in their hands; we don’t want to think that we are putting our faith in people who have no ethics or credibility.
Would it be too much to hope d’ya think that Economists are up/down there somewhere between Stock Brokers and Insurance Brokers?! *wince*
In 2004 a study showed less than 1% of Victorian adults reported they thought that tobacco companies always tell the truth. This was lower that the normal low water mark of used car salesmen. See http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/14/6/429-a
Very neat display Poss. Journalists, who are so fond of critiquing others, ought to look at how those polled critique them.
Dentists are a bit hard done by compared to other medical professionals – and just as Andrew Leigh over at Core Economics has this piece on how Dentists supported water fluoridation against their own economic interests…
Engineers represent!
Engineers, of which I am happy to be one, deserve good results. Civil engineers design the built environment – roads, structures, services, without which civilization could not exist and doctors do their work. We have more influence on health outcomes through provision of good water supplies and safe sewage disposal than any number of medical professionals. We also adhere to strict codes re structural design, planning compliance and public safety generally. It is simply not acceptable for an engineer to make mistakes in design, operation or manufacture, and this shows in other phases of engineers’ lives, including their public/social lives.
I am happy and proud to be a professional engineer and believe that the overwhelming majority of my peers deserve the ranking demonstrated by this survey.
We need a few more engineers in parliament and a few less sleaze-bag lawyers.
@ John Bennetts
I agree however one engineer that I know of in parliament, Steve Fielding, is not a shining example of articulate leadership, unfortunately.
Mechanical here, by the way.
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