BBC Voices Poll 2004

Aim-

 To find out how people feel about accents and languages across the British Isles. 

Methodology-

• Around 5010 people took part in the online poll.
• All respondents were were age 15+.
•  They were asked to rank celebrities in order of how pleasant their voices sound.
•  There was a ratio of 49 male: 51 female.
• 25-64s were over represented whereas the age bracket for 15-24 and 65+ were under represented.
• There was a wide geographical spread.
•  Social Class data was not collected within the survey.
•  97% of the whole sample said that English was their first language and 26% of the overall sample said they spoke English as well as another language.
•  It was commissioned by BBC Audience & Consumer Research and conducted by Greenfield Online.
•  Cardiff University advised on the design of some of the questions included in the poll.
•  Fieldwork was conducted between the 17th and 26th November 2004 via an online survey on the Greenfield website.

Findings-

With his Scottish/ Edinburgh accent, Sean Connery’s tone was voted as the most pleasant accent in the UK. High up on the list, there was Pierce Brosnan who was born in the Republic of Ireland, raised in England and has lived in America. In second place was Trevor McDonald, who was originally born in Trinidad. His voice was ranked high up with Moira Stewart and was thought of to be ‘authoritative’ and ‘appealing’. On the other hand, David Beckham, Billy Connolly, Cilla Black and Paul O’Grady were ranked low with the public.  

Analysis –

Respondents showed a preference for accents relatively local to them. For example Scots said they loved Ewan McGregor's Perthshire accent, the English found Hugh Grant's voice attractive. Likewise, people in Wales preferred listening to Welsh actor Richard Burton and newsreader Huw Edwards. Those in Northern Ireland found Terry Wogan's Limerick accent appealing. Northern Irish participants were the only group who found Ian Paisley's voice acceptable - his was voted 'least pleasant' by all other areas of the UK. In Northern Ireland, Janet Street-Porter's Estuary tongue was declared least attractive, and she fared little better among Scottish and Welsh voters.

Conclusion/ Evaluation-

On the whole, I think that the findings are very good as they give a good indication about what accents people prefer and don’t prefer. I also believe that the most important factor to consider in this survey was who answered it. This is because one may have preference to accents which they are familiar with. Therefore I believe that individuals are more likely to pick people from the same area as them. This as a result, makes the survey very biased, unreliable and unvalid. However, on the other hand, some could say that it is reliable because it was commissioned by a well known company (BBC).