{"id":7163,"date":"2018-01-23T05:42:43","date_gmt":"2018-01-23T05:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7163"},"modified":"2018-01-23T05:42:43","modified_gmt":"2018-01-23T05:42:43","slug":"misleadingly-good-news-about-the-sdgs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2018\/01\/23\/misleadingly-good-news-about-the-sdgs\/","title":{"rendered":"Misleadingly good news about the SDGs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Question<\/strong><\/em>: When does 75% mean not only 'not a lot', but misrepresents what's happening?<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Answer<\/strong><\/em>: When it's part of an EAUC presentation of a sustainability survey.<\/p>\n<p>The other day, the third annual \u2018<em>Sustainability in Education<\/em>\u2019 report from the National Union of Students (NUS), Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC), University and College Union (UCU), the Association of Colleges (AoC) and the College Development Network (CDN) was published.<\/p>\n<p>EAUC's presentation of the outcomes said\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.eauc.org.uk\/new_research_shows_university_and_college_leade\">this<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"The research is based on a sample of 500 staff members from universities, colleges and students\u2019 unions in the UK, with 63 respondents identifying as lead staff members on environmental sustainability and social responsibility in a formal or informal basis.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One of the key findings it highlighted was this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\"75% of respondents have reported that their institution has progressed action linked to the United Nation\u2019s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) initiative\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sounds quite good doesn't it?<\/p>\n<p>But when you dig into the data you find a problem. \u00a0The 75% is not 75% of the 500 respondents. \u00a0Page 41 of the report reveals that those who answered this question were 33 out 0f 44 of respondents who \"have a HE university or college, formal or informal remit or responsibility for delivering on\u00a0environmental sustainability and social responsibility, and the lead member of staff for environmental sustainability\u00a0and\/or social responsibility\".<\/p>\n<p>That is, of the\u00a063 respondents identifying as such\u00a0<em>lead staff members<\/em>, only 44 answered this question, and only 33 of them highlighted the SDGs when they did so \u2013 other possibilities were the Paris Agreement, the UNESCO GAP initiative and (bizarrely) the REF. \u00a0 The SDG option\u00a0was the largest choice made of the initiatives listed \u2013 in\u00a0EAUC's words: \u00a0\"the biggest motivator\".<\/p>\n<p>If data were representative of the sector, the appropriate response proportion would be nearer 25% than 75%. \u00a0However, as it isn't representative, then it's 75% of a small number of people. \u00a0This is a\u00a0pity in every sense. \u00a0I can't bring myself to think that EAUC set out to mislead us all; rather, it's probably just a casual approach to summarising research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question: When does 75% mean not only 'not a lot', but misrepresents what's happening? Answer: When it's part of an EAUC presentation of a sustainability survey. The other day, the third annual \u2018Sustainability in Education\u2019 report from the National Union...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}