According to an article on Get West London, a survey carried out by Rightmove has suggested that Hounslow is the second most miserable place to live in Britain. The article says that Hounslow came 129th out of 130 areas rated in Rightmove’s annual ‘Happy at home index’. The article further states ‘Barking & Dagenham is Britain’s glummest location, according to the survey, in which nearly 25,000 people were asked to rate their home on 12 criteria ranging from decor and space to community and safety’.
Firstly, the article does not specify where the 25,000 people that completed the survey came from and what the sampling method to find them was. The article uses the words ‘miserable’ and ‘glummest’, and both of these words may be subjective and are open to different interpretations. We are also not told what questions were in the survey. This makes us question how ‘most miserable’ and ‘glummest’ were generated from a survey on 12 criteria ranging from décor and space to community and safety. There seems to be no clear correlation between the survey criteria and the claim that Hounslow is the ‘second most miserable place to live’.
Overall, the headline is not appropriate as the sample size does not reflect the whole of Britain. 130 areas is a small sample size considering there are 326 districts in the UK overall. So the survey does not represent the whole of Britain, therefore meaning the article is wrong to claim that Hounslow is the second most miserable place to live in the whole of Britain.
Source:
http://www.getwestlondon.co.uk/news/west-london-news/hounslow-second-most-miserable-place-9801661