Page 212 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 23 February 1994
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I think we would all agree that the vast majority of people would support that. Then it asks about banning smoking in workplaces. According to this survey, more people support that than support a ban in restaurants, which is a question that comes later. A very good case could be put that it would have been fairer if this particular survey had rotated these questions, to avoid any bias. Apart from that, the survey was quite good. It gave a good range of questions to ask and, because it was a household survey, there was a fair sampling. The result of that survey was about 70 per cent for. The Australian Hotels Association said that another survey showed 83 per cent support for choice. The question in that survey was:
Do you believe hotel and restaurant patrons should be offered the choice of whether they sit in a smoking or non-smoking area?
Once again, the number of people contacted - 200 adult Canberra residents - was quite reasonable. That is enough in a place the size of Canberra. The survey was done by telephone interview.
With face-to-face interviews in someone's home and telephone interviews, there are some problems with privacy. Firstly, if you have made a telephone call, obviously you have the person's phone number and name, and it is very easy to get their address because it is beside their name in the phone book. When you go to someone's house, once again obviously you have the person's name and you know exactly where they live. Some people may be concerned that if someone comes to their door or rings their phone and they say something that may be unpopular, or that they think might be unpopular, there may be some record made of that. Whether there is or not is not the point; it is whether or not it allows any bias.
This is the reason why we use surveys around shopping areas. We survey not just the people who are shopping. People can be there for a number of reasons. Everybody, apart from invalids who cannot go out of the house, goes along to shopping centres, passes through them or goes to entertainment centres within them. We conducted a survey over three days - 19, 20 and 21 February. It is important to note why we left it fairly late. There is a fairly obvious reason. We wanted to leave it to the last practical time, to make sure that people had heard the debate fully. When legislation or a proposed change is close, the debate increases, so people have a better opportunity to make a decision.
We selected Civic, Dickson and Woden. Quite often in Civic we survey outside the Canberra Centre, but we did not do that in this case. I thank a former staff member of the Australian Bureau of Statistics for reminding me of the fact that the Canberra Centre, of course, does not allow smoking inside. While the Belconnen Mall does not ban it, it has signs up saying "No smoking". For those reasons, we left those areas out. We were in Civic, but we moved away from the Canberra Centre. Woden and Dickson did not have that potential for bias. We asked a total of 879 people whether they were smokers or non-smokers. We had 627 non-smokers, 249 smokers and three people who did not say. Some people said "occasionally" or "not cigarettes but other things" or whatever. The persons surveyed were asked to select a preference from three alternatives dealing with the subject of smoking in two categories of public areas - restaurants and clubs. The alternatives given were identical for both restaurants and clubs.
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