Honi 2014: Demographics, Engagement, Impressions

During April 10-24, the Honi Soit editorial team ran a feedback survey to get a picture of who our readers were and what they thought of our paper. Over the fortnight, we received 346 respondents. The survey was regularly promoted through our Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The following results confirm some truisms: a sizeable share of our readers study Arts and Social Sciences and live in the Inner West. We learnt that half our respondents read Honi on a weekly basis, while a third read it whenever it was around. And that twice as many respondents voted Green in the last election than Liberal.

Demographics

The bulk of respondents were aged 20-21 and 22-23.  43.5 percent of respondents studied Arts and Social Sciences. 16.5 per cent studied Law and 10.4 per cent were Science students. Over 40 percent of respondents lived in the Inner West. Respondents were next most-concentrated in the North Shore (11 per cent) and the Western Suburbs (9.3 per cent).

Politically, over 40 per cent gave the Greens their first preference in the last Federal Election. Nearly 32 per cent voted for Labor. 18.6 per cent voted Liberal. Accordingly, 38 per cent identified as “Progressive”, 17 per cent as a “Social Democrat”, and 10 per cent as “Socialist”. Correspondingly, 8.7 per cent identified as “Conservative”, 6 per cent as “Libertarian” and just over 4 per cent as “Wet Liberal”.

Engaging with Honi

More than half of our respondents read Honi in print and online, though more respondents exclusively read the paper in print than online. Respondents also appeared to either follow Honi each week (50 per cent) or very casually (31 per cent).

Impressions of Honi

On a scale of 1-5 (1 being “Very Conservative”, 5 being “Very Progressive”), respondents gave us a 4.2. This finding may explain why nearly 60 per cent of respondents thought we held a bias against Liberals on campus. Conversely, 38 per cent of respondents thought we held no bias towards a student-political faction. However, some respondents still felt we held a bias towards Grassroots (22 per cent) and the Indies (19 per cent).

Over 60 per cent of respondents felt positively about the paper, while 15 per cent were unimpressed. Less than 20 per cent of respondents were “Indifferent” to Honi.

Bonus

Respondents who voted Labor preferred us to Greens voters by a margin of 0.02 (5 being positive, 1 being negative). Liberal supporters straddled between apathy and dislike of the paper. Approval ratings were highest amongst Arts and Social Sciences students, though Science, Engineering and Law students were positive towards Honi. Medicine and Business students were mostly “indifferent”, with a slight lean towards “dislike”.