MOCK PUBLIC OPINION SURVEY QUESTIONS

Respond to each of the following statements by marking the choice deemed most appropriate to the personality of the role you have chosen to assume. Print out the entire survey and bring it to class with you on Wednesday, December 7, 2005.  Be prepared to defend and explain your responses in character during our in-class discussion of survey results.

Use the following key to indicate your responses to individual survey statements:

SA: STRONGLY AGREE
A: AGREE
NO: NO OPINION
D: DISAGREE
SD: STRONGLY DISAGREE

  1. ____ The influences of the West on Japan's popular culture has eroded our ingrained sense of cultural uniqueness.
  2. ____ The United States remains Japan's most important ally and friend.
  3. ____ Contemporary depictions of violence and sexuality in various media (manga, advertising posters, videogames. television, anime and videos) negatively influence today's young people.
  4. ____ Portable electronic gadgets (cell phones, music players, game machines) should continue to be banned from schools as educational distractions.
  5. ____ Local Offices of Education should be given greater control over school affairs in order to encourage educational diversity at both the primary and middle school levels.
  6. ____ The Ministry of Education should encourage a frank and open discussion of Japan's experiences in the 1940s, both positive and negative, in high school history textbooks.
  7. ____ In our crowded and busy lives, robot animals are preferable to real pets.
  8. ____ My own sense of personal safety, especially in train stations, subterranean shopping malls and office buildings, has decreased substantially in the aftermath of the Sarin gas attacks (1995) and the World Trade Center / Pentagon terrorist attacks (2001).
  9. ____ The erosion of our cultural committment to the uchi has contributed significantly to a higher crime rate.
  10. ____ Japanese Self-Defense Forces should be withdrawn immediately from Iraq.
  11. ____ Whatever its shortcomings, our governing system still functions more efficiently and effectively than any other found elsewhere in Asia.
  12. ____ Steps should be taken to increase female representation in the Diet by any means necessary.
  13. ____ I am knowledgeable about the political positions assumed by Diet representatives from my electoral disrtict.
  14. ____ I willingly and regularly participate in organized sports, exercise or health-enhancing physical activity.
  15. ____ Our economy is better off today than would have been the case had the Pacific War never taken place.
  16. ____ Contemporary culture, both "high" and "low", is open to active exploration of new ways of thinking and expression.
  17. ____ The traditional emphasis on group involvement is no longer a valued individual character trait.
  18. ____ I would willingly patronize a newly-opened Starbucks over a more traditional rival neighborhood coffee shop.
  19. ____ Corruption among polititians is tolerable since it has little effect on the government's ability to provide basic services.
  20. ____ Employers and society in general should provide whatever support needed to keep young mothers in the active work force.
  21. ____ Contemporary forms of popular culture provide a necessary escape from problems of the post-industrial world.
  22. ____ Japanese marriage patterns should be modified to more closely resemble those found in Europe and the United States
  23. ____ Official government policy ought to be modified so as to encourage more immigration from Asian neighbors.
  24. ____ International neighbors, near and far, are becoming increasingly important to Japan's economic prosperity in an increasingly globalized world.
  25. ____ Fear of karoshi ("death from overwork") is driving younger workers into the part-time labor market instead of "salaryman" occupations .

 

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