Women's Voices: Unpacking the SheSpeaks Survey Results with Libby Rodney - PART 1
Jun 13, 2024
SheSpeaks, Inc.
In this episode, we are joined by Libby Rodney, the Chief Strategy Officer at The Harris Poll. LIbby helps us break down the results of the latest SheSpeaks Community Survey.
Join us as we unpack the perceptions of women on the economy, the upcoming presidential elections, economic concerns and how these things are impacting families. We talk about the heightened anxiety Americans face due to macro forces like financial crises, political uncertainty, and technological disruptions, culminating in a permanent state of national anxiety affecting health and longevity. We also dive into why women are feeling that the US is on the wrong track.
Libby also shares insights from her role as Chief Strategy Officer at Harris Poll, discussing how emerging beliefs and attitudes are researched and the significant influence of question framing in obtaining accurate data.
Tune in to explore how the questions we ask shape the answers we get and the implications for the results.
In this episode, we are joined by Libby Rodney, the Chief Strategy Officer at The Harris Poll. LIbby helps us break down the results of the latest SheSpeaks Community Survey.
Join us as we unpack the perceptions of women on the economy, the upcoming presidential elections, economic concerns and how these things are impacting families. We talk about the heightened anxiety Americans face due to macro forces like financial crises, political uncertainty, and technological disruptions, culminating in a permanent state of national anxiety affecting health and longevity. We also dive into why women are feeling that the US is on the wrong track.
Libby also shares insights from her role as Chief Strategy Officer at Harris Poll, discussing how emerging beliefs and attitudes are researched and the significant influence of question framing in obtaining accurate data.
Tune in to explore how the questions we ask shape the answers we get and the implications for the results.
72% of Americans agree that the US is in a permanent state of anxiety that is affecting our health and our longevity, and so I think, in that case, there's a real call for leadership across all types of organizations, whether that be the government, which is an obvious one, but also business leaders, community organizers. How do we bring down this collective anxiety that is having such a detrimental impact on everyone's lives?
Speaker 2:
Welcome back to the show. Hope you're all having a terrific week so far. So we have a really special episode for you today. You may know that one of the things that we do at she Speaks is we do a ton of research where we ask women who are part of our community all sorts of questions which women get to weigh in and take surveys for us. And then we come back and share the results of those surveys and we'll ask women in our community questions about how they're shopping, how they're thinking about voting and in the upcoming election, how they are thinking about social issues, how they're thinking about anything that's on their minds. And we've over the years over the past 15 years, we have done thousands of surveys and we just get such terrific insight, really valuable perspectives from thousands of community members of she Speaks community members who take our surveys. So what we're going to do today is share with you the results of a survey that we have been doing, and we've done a couple in a row over the last couple of months. Our most recent was done in very late May and we asked women questions that really were to try to understand what was on women's minds as we head into the 2024 presidential elections.
Speaker 2:
As we head into the 2024 presidential elections, I'm going to have a guest on where we talk through what are some of the key findings and really why? Why do women answer the questions the way they do? Why do we have 78% of women saying, for instance, that they think the country is heading in the wrong direction? I mean, that is just a very large percentage of women. I have on with me today the really talented and so insightful Libby Rodney. She is the chief strategy officer of the Harris Poll. I'm sure you've probably heard of the Harris Poll If you ever hear about, you know on any news station where they're talking about any kind of survey that was done. Frequently it is results and surveys from a company called the Harris Poll, and Libby has just such a wonderful way of breaking down what are the implications like. Why are women answering the questions the way that they are? What does it all mean? And so she really helps me go through and make sense of these results that we have from our survey. I think you're going to find this episode really interesting, especially if you're someone who is wondering what is going on and how are people thinking about the elections that are coming up and what's on their minds just generally as we are heading into that season.
Speaker 2:
So this conversation was actually quite long, so we broke it into two sections. Today we are going to give you part one, where we talk about the increasing concern that women have of the direction that the United States is going. We talk about what the impact was of the pandemic and how that's really impacted our collective anxiety, and we talk about a number of other issues related to the economy and why people are thinking about the economy the way they are. We're going to jump right into it. Here we go. About the economy the way they are. We're going to jump right into it. Here we go.
Speaker 2:
Libby welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. What a pleasure. Well, I could think of nobody better to have on today to talk with me about this, what we're going to go through. You are a research expert. You have been in this space. You understand what it means to ask consumers for their perspective on something and how to interpret perspectives. So let's start with maybe you can just share a little bit about who you are and what role you have at Harris and what Harris does. Sure, yeah, happy to.
Speaker 1:
So I'm Libby Rodney. I'm the Chief Strategy Officer of the Harris Poll. In that role I'm kind of chief of insights and futures. So I run a practice with this amazing woman and partner of mine, abby Lunny. We run a practice about thought leadership and the futures for brands and corporations across Harris. Harris is known in the media and with journalists as a purveyor of truth and trying to navigate what's happening in society With corporations. We try to think about what's happening in society that boardrooms need to know and that the C-suite needs to know, and so we spend a lot of time on thinking about what are these emerging beliefs and attitudes and value shifts that are really taking place from a real macro perspective? But then also what are the new micro signals that changes abreast? So just spending a lot of time doing those fun things.
Speaker 2:
Yeah and so and so important, right it's. I am a big believer and, first of all, I am sure everyone has like you can't like watch any type of you know news or what and not see you know a Harris poll quoted at some point. So I'm very grateful that you're here to chat with us because I think you have a really good handle. You were just telling me before we started about some work that you just did about astrology and I am not someone who's that up to speed on astrology, but I know it's like a fascinating area and people find it fascinating. Can you share with us maybe just a couple of things that our audience might find interesting about what you learned from this research you've been doing on astrology?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I mean, I think people think about astrology from an entertainment angle, but we're finding that especially the millennial generation is seeing astrology as more of a force of navigation in their life.
Speaker 1:
For example, eight in 10 millennials use astrology for guidance of health and their relationships. One of my favorite stats of this study and you can find it, it's called the astrology study search, the Harris Bowl but is that four in 10 millennials have actually canceled the date because they found out the person had an incompatible sign to them. And so talk about filter and noise. Right, this is, I think, in a world where there's so much data and conversations and people to filter through and you have to decide what is right for you in that moment, astrology, and especially millennials, are turning to astrology for some of that guidance, and that study is really fundamental in showcasing that and showcasing even the amount of money people are spending on astrology. So here's one more fun fact People who are spending money on astrology.
Speaker 1:
The average amount they're spending a year is around $850 a year. Now you think about that in terms of the context of inflation and financial instability and that $850 is a lot. That's like the same amount people are spending on entertainment subscription services, which we see going down. So astrology is playing some sort of meaningful role in people's lives right now.
Speaker 2:
I'm like. I'm sorry, my mouth is open. I am escaping Four and 10. And millennials, for those listening, if you're not familiar with the years of the millennial, millennials are probably around the oldest millennials, like early 30, like 30 maybe no, no.
Speaker 1:
So millennials are 28 to 43. And I think why that's important is because you hit your 30s, you hit your 35, and you hit your 40s, and all of those are critical life moments of indecision and what happened to my life moments?
Speaker 2:
Interesting, right, okay, so I was a little bit, I was overestimating or underestimating the age range, but like a 28-year-old, all the way to a 43-year-old, which is a pretty broad range of age, it's like a lot of years. So four in 10 have canceled a date because the sign of the person, the astrological sign of the person they were supposed to go on the date with, was incompatible with them. Yes, okay, all right, we got to filter out people somehow you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:
So, no, that's a really interesting point, though I you know, when you made that point, I was thinking to myself that you know. Look, now people say that you know, politics is playing a very big role in who they are, who they will be willing to go on a date with that. A lot of the apps you know. You know you can state, oh, you know, this is my political affiliation and I'm not interested in dating somebody who's not, and that's an issue, but I guess you're.
Speaker 2:
You know, if you think about the filtering that you talked about, it's a way to filter and if you're like looking to, you know there's so many options coming at you that if you can find ways to filter it down and maybe astrological is as good as any I guess yeah.
Speaker 2:
Why not? Why not? Well, thank you for giving us some insight on that, because I'm fascinated by it. But let's talk a little bit about you know what you're seeing in terms of so you do a lot of research where you're asking. You know Harris Paul asks people all sorts of questions to try to understand, culturally, what's going on and then the implications of all of that. Is there anything that you want to point out that's just kind of a trend right now that's going on in research? I know there's, you know there's there's use of AI, there's all of this other stuff like and to your point about trying to block out the noise that's out there. Just anything that we should be aware of before we kind of dive into the result that the most recent studies that we've done aware of. Before we kind of dive into the result that the most recent studies that we've done, that people should kind of know about what's going on in the research space.
Speaker 1:
I mean from a research point of view, it is getting more noisy. The thing we're watching for is AI and a lot of clients will come to us and say how are you using AI? Can you make this process cheaper, faster? And there's obviously ways that we're trying to incorporate it into our business. But we have a lot of caution for the market and mostly because there's a lot of AI bot farms.
Speaker 1:
So there are these survey farms and we had ways of filtering out people who were duplicates or fake robotic armies.
Speaker 1:
You know, just just filling out these survey respondents, and Harris has had a long quality practice of being able to get rid of those. We're now having to increase our quality process when people take surveys to to trap a bot, like if an AI bot is responding. So, for example, an AI bot if you give them a picture, if you give someone a picture in a survey and you say it's like a kid eating ice cream and you say describe what this is, and a human will say it's a kid eating ice cream, but a bot will give you a paragraph because it thinks that you want all this detail and then we actually filter that response out and we do that over and over and over again. So there's ways in which we're trying to get ahead of it, because the thing that we have stood on since the 60s, when Harris was created, is quality and making sure that we really get quality respondents, and we feel very confident we can stand on that still, but it's something we're absolutely watching for from an AI point of view.
Speaker 2:
Wow, that's amazing. What if, like, I just wouldn't even have thought that you've got AI bots out there.
Speaker 1:
They're taking surveys, but imagine, because they're getting money for every survey they take.
Speaker 2:
So oh, interesting Right Because it's a paid panel Got it All right. Well, with that then in mind, when we're doing our research, it's obviously within members of our community, so they have a profile and they're taking the survey. So that's kind of the backdrop here, and I guess I want to understand that. We know that perspectives and opinions change all the time. We get that, and that's one of the reasons we ask we are so often doing research.
Speaker 2:
But one of the things that we are seeing consistently lately and this is a question we ask all the time we ask women do they think that the country is headed the US is headed in the right direction, and for a while, we have seen the percentage of people saying no, it's not heading in the right direction.
Speaker 2:
We've seen that increase, so it's just getting a little bit more out of whack. So, for example, when we asked the survey we asked this in a study that we did in April 75% of women said that they thought that the country was headed in the wrong direction, and that was up 40% from when we asked the same question in December of 2023. But when we asked the question again in our latest study in May, 78% of women said that they thought the country was headed in the wrong direction. So basically, we're seeing this steady increase of people who are not women, who are saying they think we're not headed in the right direction. And I'm not asking like what's your personal opinion of that, libby? What do you think drives this? So somebody we have women taking the survey what do you think is driving responses from when they're taking a survey like this?
Speaker 1:
Yeah. So what's interesting is in our research too, just to validate what you're seeing and that rising increase is this is what we see amongst all Americans, men and women, and I think the drivers of it are more than political. So what I would say is, traditionally, when you think of a question like that, it's always been linked to the presidential candidates or the ruling party. But in a lot of cases right now, the macro context in which we talk about everything right now, at the Harris Poll at least is the fact that we're situated in what academics would call a polycrisis, and so this is a kind of new term, and this term is what it means is that we're in a phase of stacked existential crisis, and that is we're in a financial crisis, right or uncertainty. There's a lot of inflation. It feels uncomfortable for everyone. We're in political uncertainty. We're also in geopolitical war, and there's wars happening that feel very personal and relate to people. We have cybersecurity issues. We have AI disruption. We have social justice rights and movements. We have human rights movements when you think about things like reproductive rights and all of these things stack on people, and I was talking to an expert who's a therapist and she was saying so interesting.
Speaker 1:
I know this is a podcast so people can't see me, but our anxiety is supposed to be kind of at our heart level let's put it that way and our collective anxiety post the pandemic is more at our chin level.
Speaker 1:
And what does that mean?
Speaker 1:
It means that we get in this rapid fight or flight mode and we have a hard time processing where we are and what we can tell in this fight or flight mode, and this is why you have cancel culture.
Speaker 1:
This is why people are good or bad, but in this fight or flight stage, we have a lot of collective anxiety, and so it is going to feel like until there's big movements of change, even if there's different presidential candidates or the election changes one way or the other, I think we're going to be in a state of discomfort.
Speaker 1:
Until some of these big macro forces whether it's the economic force or whether it's how AI plays out in culture or some of these wars go away, that we will feel this kind of collective ease happening. I just want to point out one piece of research that I think is kind of interesting and this is something both Democrats and Republicans agree with is that 72% of Americans agree that the US is in a permanent state of anxiety that is affecting our health and our longevity, and so I think, in that case, there's a real call for leadership across all types of organizations, whether that be the government, which is an obvious one, but also business leaders, community organizers like how do we, how do we bring down this collective anxiety that is having such a big you know, detrimental impact on everyone's lives?
Speaker 2:
Wow. So 72% of Americans feel like we are, their health is being negatively impacted by the anxiety level that is just all around us Persistent, yeah, wow, you know what and you know what's so interesting I have, on one of our prior podcast episodes, I had a psychiatrist on who had written this really great book about anxiety, and one of the things she said was that persistent anxiety is like prolonged where you have no result. Resolution to it leads to depression, which is why you so many more people feeling depressed because they are living such an interesting. I just kind of put those two yeah, either well to add on to that.
Speaker 1:
So a big part of anxiety, or the counter punched anxiety, is self-agency and control and being able to feel like you can control something or a narrative. And I think, because we're in this perma crisis of these macro forces, it can feel really hard to find where is your personal agency coming from and, I think, trying to decipher or help people. However, you can knock out personal agency, I think that could be something really powerful for a lot of people to think about and figure out. How do you impact?
Speaker 2:
this. I love that. I think that that is. I'm totally in agreement with you. I feel like that. You know that is. Another thing, too is that, as you feel like there's nothing you can do about it, so you're in this anxiety loop that we're talking about and you don't personally control, control how you move, that you are able to move forward out of it, because these are macro issues in our society. The things that you mentioned I wrote down the list, you know economic, political, the wars, the geopolitical, cybersecurity, AI, like the reactive rights, social issues. These are things that, as an individual, it feels so hard to have an impact on. Those things.
Speaker 1:
Right and, if you so, another thing that constantly comes up in our discussions is just the disillusionment that can happen with that. And especially we see young people who are very disillusioned by where they can have their impact. Like they have a lot of ideals to have an impact, but then sometimes, or especially in these election cycles, when they get to the polls and they see you know people who are very, very senior to them in terms of age and not to be ageist, but they don't, they can't even relate to a candidate's point of view or perspective. It starts to feel they start to get into like a mode where they're just living on two different planets and that disillusionment is almost actually dangerous to a democracy in some ways, because you don't want young people not to engage in self-agency and advocacy for the system, to make the system work for the people.
Speaker 2:
Yes, I mean that's and that's worth exploring certainly more. I, I, I, you know this, this is. This is really good background, I think, for people on. You know just how. You know how the results from a survey kind of are reflective of what's going on in the macro environment and how to think about that. Another stat from the survey our most recent survey, our May survey, said that 55% of women think that the economy is getting worse. Right, so this is up from 51% in April, which was our Q2 survey. So just in like a six week period, we went from, you know, 51% thinking the economy was getting worse to now 55% thinking the economy is getting worse. The reality may not actually reflect that right, meaning, like you know, is the US economy actually getting worse. But from a research standpoint, what do you think might actually drive that difference between the perception, right, which is what we're seeing right when they take a survey it's their perception and then the reality, which may be that the economy is not actually getting worse?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think it's like think it's basically what happens in your kitchen and what happens with your cars. So we found that 88% of Americans, for example so it's nearly nine in 10, say gas and groceries and housing, not stocks, are the real economic indicators that I care about. And when you see some areas of the country have $6, $7 gas or their oranges have gone from, you know, four for $2 to four for $8. These are things that just impact you, that you cannot escape. Also, we've seen this trend for a while where economists are saying like, look the stats and the signals are good.
Speaker 1:
And so in our research we see that business leaders are actually pretty optimistic about the economy, but consumers aren't, or like regular people aren't. And we even found that 72% of Americans say economists may say things are getting better, but we're not feeling it where I live say economists may say things are getting better, but we're not feeling it where I live. And I think it's so important to acknowledge that, even if the economist reality is one way, the fact that people feel differently about that, when they close their eyes at night, when they wake up in the morning, when they think about the job that they are not taking, when they think about the job that they are not taking. It has a real psychological impact on their perceived sense of security and those anxiety levels. So I think the fact that our gas, our groceries products are higher, it is really impacting the American consumer.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think that's an excellent point and I think that's how everyday people to your point like the economists versus everyday people like those of us who live in this country and operate here day to day is. You know, we think about it, as does my money go as far as it used to, and, to your point, you know, if my groceries are more expensive, if my gas is more expensive, if it costs more to put a roof over my, my family's head, then I think that the economy is getting worse because I don't have it's not like I have more money to pay for those things. I'm getting huge raises, like most people, like you have your money, but all these other things that are day-to-day expenses are getting more expensive and so you have less money to pay for that, which is why you will think, oh, the economy is getting worse because I have less money to pay for the things I need to pay for day to day.
Speaker 1:
Well, and also there's kind of there's a big systems and structures thing that we're thinking about. So we've done a state of housing report, for example. We found four in 10 Americans say that their city is so expensive that it's barely livable. That number increases to 62% of renters. So you're getting people who say everything in the city and I think so. I know I had mentioned gas and groceries and everything, but it's like it's all these little things that they're all. Everyone's just kind of upping the price during these inflationary times.
Speaker 1:
And then the other thing that we're really watching is the role of wealth and equities in this country and how people perceive that. So, for example, 81% of people believe that wealth inequity is a serious national issue, and 75% of sorry, that's 81% of Gen Z and millennials think that wealth inequity is a serious national issue, versus only 72% of boomers and Gen X. But here's the real kicker for me is 75% of Gen Z and millennials report that classism is present in their daily life, and that drops a lot for Gen X and boomers at only 59%. And so I think the signaling of wealth and what people have and they don't have, and these cities that are barely livable that they're living in. I think that has a lot to do with how we perceive the economy and're talking about that.
Speaker 2:
Well, how, how are people defining classism Right? You said that that there's this large percentage of Gen Z and millennial who feel like classism is is a big issue, and I people have and what like what people can afford versus maybe what they can afford and other people they know, unless. I mean, is that how they?
Speaker 1:
Well, yes, I mean, I think the reason we started asking the question is because we were doing a lot of interviews around the travel industry and specifically airlines, and the idea that you board a plane based on your class is what more and more people feel like.
Speaker 1:
So you can either have a great experience at an airport by getting all the perks and cutting the lines and then boarding first and getting your luggage first, or you can have the worst experience in the world where you're behind everyone doing the things. In New York, in particular, you can get the best restaurant reservations by paying extra. So everything that the especially younger people are doing, whether it's restaurant reservations, whether it's some sort of experience, all these things that they care about concerts, tickets everything you can achieve if you're willing to pay a certain price. And those prices have been really inflated, right. If you think about Taylor Swift concerts, they've gone up to $5,000. A ticket. That is a signal to them, to the younger people, that that money buys everything but that taste isn't equated for, and so that classism, that feeling that they can't get it, starts to elevate that is super helpful.
Speaker 2:
I'm glad you raised all of those elements because it's true, when you think about you know how this, those generations you're talking about the millennials and the Gen Z what they're engaging with day to day buying tickets to a concert or trying to buy tickets to a concert, these things that are part of their lives, their day to day lives, right?