The survey is in! Part 1

Recently I proposed a survey to all of the Warsaw residents. So, this was sent out to as many people as I knew, as well as readers of this blog, and asked that these people to complete this and maybe even forward to others. Hoping to get to all of Warsaw, of course that will never happen but you have to live with hope sometimes.

Firstly, thanks to the all of the people who completed this, it really is greatly appreciated. For those that did not see the survey or did not do it I will give a quick run down. My idea was, in a hopefully simple manner, to survey residents of Warsaw and ask them what they thought. What they liked, did not etc. I also collected some simple personal data like social habits, if they had pets, etc. Of course this survey is somewhat skewed and is in no way definitive. It was not limited to people born in Warsaw, nor Poland for that matter, and it was very interesting to see some other expat opinions.

I asked questions like:

• What are your thoughts on Warsaw (what do you think of when you think of Warsaw)
• What 5 words best describe Poland
• How do Poles differ from other nationalities

which I am aware are not really conducive to surveys as it to open and not closed and therefore difficult to interpret at the end. So, what did I expect from the survey and the answers? Well, I imagined that an average Warsawian, as a rough summation, would be something like this:

Searching for the average Warsawian. Where are you?

Female, mid 20's to mid 30's, from a town/city other than Warsaw, single, social smoker, social drinker, no pets or children, 2 international trips per year, their favourite city would be something opulent/exotic (Paris, Barcelona, Marrakech), drives to work, likes Italian and/or sushi, finds Warsaw busy, ugly and dirty and the reason they like it is because of business opportunities, they like the seaside, drink beer, don't read, prefer night over day, coffee over tea and baths over showers, oh, and hate surveys.




Sound Warsawian to you? Let's see if I am right:


Some quick demographics the average respondent (and therefore my average Warsawian) is:

Female (57%)	Married (47%)	25-30 years old (36%)
31% were born in Warsaw	Next best city was Białystok (8%)	Other nations represented were Philippines, Turkey, Mexico, Białoruś, USA & Australia
A whopping 92% had a licence	Yet only 55% had a car	54% came to work by car
Childless (65%)	If they did 52% had one child	The most was 3
Pet free (64%)	If they did it was an even split between cats and dogs	There were also fish, turtles and parrots
Non-smoker (71%) Social smokers were (9%)	If they smoked it was only 1-5 a week (43%)	88% are right handed
Drinker (53%) Social drinkers were (39%)	When they did drink it would be 1-5 per week (73%)	63% drink wine over beer
Normally go abroad twice a year (22%)	Prefers Italian food (42%)	53% prefer a shower to a bath
25% visit google most, closely followed by 21% each who visit Facebook or onet.pl most	An even split for night/day, tea/coffee, cash/credit card and drinking vs dancing.	76% prefer the cinema to a movie at home
57% prefer a soup over dessert	61% like the city over country	60% prefer yellow over grey
71% eat cake better than biscuits (cookies)	56% would rather eat at a restaurant than to cook at home	83% read a book over playing a computer game
65% want silver over golden bling	79% drink only bottled water and not from the tap	44% prefer the seaside over mountains or lake regions
57% call rather than text or email people.		54% actually like surveys!

Surprised? I was very much so with some of these things. Of course, many of the questions I asked were a little superfluous and not really going to give us the greatest knowledge of the Polish psyche but there were small reasons behind these, some were though purely personal interest (like cake vs biscuit). 

Next post we will look at more answers learn more about Poles, and Warsawians.