Introduction
im4u.world launched its Global Survey on April 22, 2021 (Earth Day). The survey asks what people globally believe are humanity's most urgent issues. It follows up by asking how those issues affect our lives and communities, the opportunities and constraints to finding resolution, and our willingness to participate in the solution.
The im4u.world Global Survey Report 2022 is the first annual report of the results. The report is presented here as a series of Learn-Engage-Empower blog chapters. The series will follow the 15 questions of the survey over two months (July and August).
The report represents the results of one year of data collection and analysis. We hope you find the results thought-provoking and inspiring. The results will be the basis of engaging in productive discussion to find solutions to some of our most pressing problems facing humanity. We hope this inspires you and your communities of interest to take action and make a meaningful difference in our world.
The Learn-Engage-Empower series, What the World Told Us, to date:
Part 1 - July 7, 2022 - A Vision and Challenges
Question 1: Imagine you are now living 25 years into the future. What is your vision of the world, then? What do you hope it would be like?
Part 2 - July 14, 2022 - Your Hometown
Question 2: What problems do you have in your community today that must be solved before they could be part of your vision of the future?
Question 3: How do those problems in your community affect your life today?
Part 3 - July 21, 2022 - Local Problems
Question 4: What happened that created those problems in your community?
Question 5: What will happen to your community if it cannot, or will not, solve those problems?
Part 4 - July 28, 2022 - Eyes Forward
Question 6: How much better would the quality of life in your community be if it could solve those problems?
Question 7: Where did you learn about those problems in your community?
Question 8: What are the opportunities available today to solve them?
Did you know? The Global Survey is ongoing, and it is never too late to complete one. Please visit the im4u.world Global Survey today at https://www.im4u.world/globalsurvey. Every voice matters.
15 simple questions. That is all it takes for you to begin making a positive difference in the world!
We continue our deeper examination into our hometown issues, but now we begin to look forward. While we continue to gain a deeper understanding of the issues, we want to answer some fundamental questions that might help all of us find solutions.
Question 6: How much better would the quality of life in your community be if it could solve those problems?
This is a numeric answered question.
Values:
1 = Lowest value; 10 = Highest value
Weighted average = 8.89
Summary:
The weighted average is in the 4th quartile of values. On average, people scored this question high.
It is significant that no one assigned a value less than 5 in their response.
Consider the catastrophic attitude to the responses in Q5. (Q5 What will happen if your community cannot, or will not, solve these problems?) It makes sense that with Q6, people view the quality of life improvements highly if the issues identified in Q2 are resolved. (Q2 What problems do you have in your community today that must be solved before it could be part of your vision of the future?)
Almost half of the respondents chose the highest value possible to answer this question. This is similar to the “all or nothing” attitude to the responses in Q5.
The stakes are high for the respondents when presented from this perspective.
Inverse reasoning suggests that the survey respondents are feeling the impacts of the problems in their communities acutely because they rank improvements to their quality of life highly if the problems are resolved. This may suggest a sense of urgency in finding solutions.
Question 7: Where did you learn about those problems in your community?
The answers to this question reflect where people got their information and also topics that were important to them. That wasn’t anticipated. So it is difficult to say how the two (information sources and topics) are related. Take the response, Forest Fires (from Planet & Environment). Did people get their information about forest fires from specific forest fire information sources? Or, was forest fires a topic they learned about in the context of another issue? Or was forest fires a topic on their mind not connected at all to any particular information source? It’s hard to say. Generally, people don’t distinguish between the topic and the information source, so all three answers are probably correct to some degree.
The characteristics of the information sources are interesting and telling.
There is a wide range and diverse means in which people get their information. Traditional sources, such as newspapers, neighborhood connections, and religious institutions still play a role but not as much as before. Social media, blogs, specialty news outlets, and podcasts indicate the growing importance and influence of the internet on people's lives.
Many respondents learned from a combination of personal observation, interaction with friends, family, work, and/or community of interest, and third-party impersonal sources, such as television news.
No one admitted to a lack of knowledge or information. The responses overwhelmingly show an ongoing connection to their community.
People can indulge their myriad of interests more readily now with the vast array of information sources available on the internet. People can engage with different forms of media now in different ways, such as reading, listening, viewing, writing, talking, and gaming.
Information comes in many different forms and people glean it from places that may be initially thought of as unlikely sources. For example, a job listing can provide information about what a community’s or organization's issues or priorities may be, such as a city looking for a sustainability manager or a company looking for a diversity liaison.
Information sources naturally occur where people congregate, whether physically (such as a religious institution), or virtually (such as an online discussion forum).
There is an underlying assumption that people trust the information source where they learned about the problems in their community. Note, this is not commenting if the information source is accurate, only that people trust the sources they use. It’s undetermined whether people went to these information sources purposely to discover and learn or if they came across it casually, as a result of going to the source for some other reason. Likewise, it’s undetermined whether people went to multiple sources to verify or learn more about the topic.
Question 8: What are the opportunities available today to solve them?
The top 5 categories where people identified opportunities are: Government & Society, Planet & Environment, Economic, Spiritual, and Education accounting for approximately 78% of all opportunities identified.
It is interesting to note that Education is a category in which people believe there are many opportunities to resolve local problems that affect their vision of the future yet Education was not seen as an important problem in earlier questions.
Spiritual opportunities were on people’s minds too. Spiritual refers broadly to internal attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions, and respondents identified these as opportunities to bring resolution to local problems.
Almost half of the opportunities identified are from Government & Society and ran the gamut from institutions to individuals and the public to the private sector.
There likely is an echo effect, where the low results in a more specialized category are captured (or echoed) in a broader category. For example, people may see an opportunity for local government to do something with the homeless population. Instead of pointing to an agency that works with affordable housing, the respondent may indicate government in general as the opportunity.
The diversity of opportunities identified affirms that local people have a lot of information and ideas on how to fix their local problems.
A sentiment analysis identified 16.55% of the responses as negative, 41.38% of the responses as positive, and 42.07% of the respondents were either neutral or couldn’t be determined to have a sentiment.
Most people identified some opportunity, both general and specific.
Important Caveat
The Global Survey is not a statistical survey, meaning that the method by which it was designed and administered yielded statistically significant results. The results are not a statistical representation of the world's population. Anyone was welcome to answer the survey. More importantly, the survey results will define the topics and framework starting the next phase of im4u. world's development, Engagement. Subscribe to im4u.world for updates and an invitation to join global conversations. There is no cost and no obligation. Visit: https://www.im4u.world/join-subscribe-contact
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The next three questions in the survey focus on developing a framework to find solutions. Join us next week as we continue our blog series on The Global Survey Results.
Question 9: What are the most important questions that must be answered before those problems can be solved?
Question 10: What must change to solve the problems you identified?
Question 11: Who should be working on these solutions?
im4u.world is an ambitious project designed to build positive and constructive conversations worldwide, share learning experiences and make real change locally.
Make a difference in the world. We can show you how.
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