Thursday, April 28, 2011

Standard of Living

I took a consumer survey today that asked me if I would be willing to experience a decrease in standard of living in favor of my environmental concerns, (for me this means to use less energy, buy less stuff, pay more for organic local food, grow your own food, etc.) I didn't like how the question was posited, because it assumes that having less pollution (cleaner water, air, land) isn't an increase in standard of living. Honestly, some people are annoyingly clueless. (In this case survey writers. What's worse, there was no place on the survey to express this.)

2 comments:

Margaret said...

Excellent point! Wording is everything. I remember taking a survey in the doctor's office back when I was in grad school. The questions were along the line of: have you suffered a lack of sleep in the past 6 months? have you felt anxious about your future? I told the doctor: what grad student WOULDN'T answer yes to all these questions?

Maeskizzle said...

hahaha, soo true. Grad school is soo much work. You're right on to point that out to the doctor, hahaha. And yes! Wording is super important! It gives away perspective soo much. I think the person who wrote the survey I read was not an environmentalist!!!!