“Yob culture is a growing issue for British business, causing losses of £9.8 billion last year alone”

Daily Express, via Press Association, 16 February 2012

"New research reveals the crippling impact of yob culture on British businesses, which cost £9.8 billion in 2011 and is expected to cost almost a third more this year"

RSA Group, 16 February 2012

The Daily Express featured an article yesterday about the cost of British yob culture to businesses. They commented that around one in five firms had been hit by mindless criminality in the last year at an average cost of just over £20,000 for each affected business.

The figures came from a press release by the RSA multinational insurance group.

But how reliable are the estimates?

Analysis

The RSA's figures were from a survey conducted in January this year. The RSA were unwilling to provide us with the survey itself although they were forthcoming with some details on the methodology.

The RSA asked 1,000 UK business managers from selected industries what their experience of 'yob culture' had been in 2011.

The research defined 'yob culture' as one of five different types of criminal behaviour: petty theft, broken doors and windows, intimidation and harassment, graffiti and littering.

With yob culture defined within these parameters the study showed that 17 percent of businesses had been adversely affected in the last year. 52 percent complained that they had had their doors or windows broken and 50 percent had experienced petty theft.

Those who had been affected by any of these offences were then asked to calculate, within ranges which the RSA have not published, how much the damages had cost them. The average response amounted to £20,693.93.

In order to extrapolate this data, RSA used figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The ONS released figures in October 2011 which show the activity size and location of UK businesses. The total number of businesses in Great Britain at this time amounted to 2.46 million, including everything from tiny one-man-bands to large defence companies.

RSA concluded that since nearly one fifth of the 1,000 business managers surveyed said their firms had suffered the kinds of trouble asked about, and since those affected put the average cost around £20,000, multiplying these figures out showed a total cost to British business of 'yob culture' of £9.8 billion.

There were, however, a number of concerning caveats about the data and that conclusion.

The biggest problem with the information is that the survey is unpublished. The RSA refused access to the findings and One Poll - who conducted the survey - have have not yet responded to our request.

This seems to be in conflict with the fact that One Poll employs members of the Market Research Society (MRS) who clearly state in their code of conduct that:

 "Members must comply with reasonable requests to make available to anyone the technical information necessary to assess the validity of any published findings from a project."

One Poll itself is not listed as a member of the British Polling Council, the industry body that seeks to "ensure standards of disclosure designed to provide consumers of survey results that enter the public domain have an adequate basis for judging the reliability and validity of the results."

Without access to the data, it is extremely difficult to access the veracity of the claims in the RSA press release.

Nevertheless, there are several apparent reasons to be cautious about the conclusions drawn from the poll.

1. We do not know whether the sample of businesses surveyed is representative of the 2.4 million business in Great Britain.
   
   
2. To go from costs estimated by around 170 businesses to an estimate for the other 2.4 million requires a great deal of faith that the sample really is representative in the face of the many variations in types and sizes of business that the RSA has extrapolated to.
   
   
3. The "average cost of £4,000 for every single business in Britain" is not a very clear way to describe the fact that 4 out of 5 businesses surveyed claimed no cost, and 1 out of 5 counted costs of £20,000.
   
   
4. The businesses surveyed expected the costs to go up in the coming year, by as much as 823 per cent in the East of England. This is surprising in the year after the August riots and causes us to wonder how reliable the cost estimates are for 2011. That, of course, cannot be judged unless the methodology and data is published.

The Market Research Society's Code of Conduct also stipulates that:

"Members must take reasonable steps to check and where necessary amend any Client-prepared materials prior to publication to ensure that the published results will not be incorrectly or misleadingly reported."

So we hope that One Poll will be able to explain that these difficulties have been considered and dealt with.

Conclusion

Any news outlet reporting the findings such as the Express via the Press Association would have been well advised to express caution when reporting the findings given the opacity and concerns raised here about the methodology.

The extent to which the findings can be applied to a wider understanding of 'yob culture' is questionable.

Until more information is released about the study Full Fact can only speculate on the seemingly important caveats discussed here. We will however continue in our attempts to secure the release of the details.