95% of Pinoys proud when local athletes perform well at international tilts

MANILA, Philippines – Almost all Filipinos are proud when local athletes perform well and are recognized in international stages, polling firm Social Weather Stations (SWS) said on Thursday.

Out of the 1,800 adult respondents that SWS asked in a survey conducted from September 27 to 30, 79 percent said that they are very proud while 17 percent answered that they are somewhat proud.

Two percent of the respondents meanwhile said that they are not very proud while one percent said they are not proud at all.

These results, SWS said, are partly higher than what was obtained in the previous survey, which was conducted way back in 2008.  In that 2008 survey, only 74 percent were very proud, 19 percent somewhat proud, while five percent were not very proud and another two percent not proud at all.

The survey was conducted before the country’s hosting of the 30th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, and after the FIBA Basketball World Cup where the Philippine men’s basketball team participated but suffered crushing defeats, wounding up without a win in five games.

In the latest SEA Games, the Philippines topped all countries, garnering 387 medals, 149 of which are gold, 117 silver, and 121 bronze.

SWS said that they also found out that the appreciation for Filipino athletes was consistently high across both sexes and all localities surveyed, with results not not varying that much.

“Four in five in Metro Manila (84%) and Balance Luzon (81%) are very proud of the country’s achievements in sports, slightly higher than the 77% in Visayas and 72% in Mindanao,” SWS noted.

“Eighty-one percent of Filipino males are very proud of the country’s achievements in international sports, slightly higher than the 76% among the females,” they added.

According to SWS, the survey interviewed 600 respondents each in Balance Luzon and Mindanao, and 300 each for Metro Manila and Visayas.  They are maintaining sampling error margins of ±2.3% for national percentages, ±4% each for Balance Luzon and Mindanao, and ±6% each for Metro Manila and the Visayas.

To obtain the results, the respondents were asked the question “Gaano ninyo ipinagmamalaki and Pilipinas tuwing nagwawagi sa pang-internasyonal na isports o laro? [How proud are you when Philippines does well at an international sports or games competition?]”.