London tops the poll of least skilled in the UK
Men across the UK believe they have a high level of expertise at most things. When it comes to asking for help with a task, 51% of women would ask their partner for assistance while only 14% of men would bother.
In a poll commissioned to celebrate the launch of HowTo.tv, the online home of instructional videos delivered online and to your mobile, people in the south west said they regarded themselves as experts in cooking (95%) and health and fitness (70%) while in the north east they believe their expertise is in computing (96%) and gardening (71%), and in Wales housework (93%) and DIY (70%) are what they do best. In Scotland, 35% of people felt they were experts at car maintenance.
London tops the poll as the place with “no expertise” in a variety of pursuits from computing (12% have no expertise), car maintenance (74% no expertise) gardening (50% no expertise), to DIY (46% no expertise). However, Londoners consider themselves experts in sports (53%) and hair and beauty (56%).
The research was conducted on-line in April 2007 amongst a nationally representative sample of 1204 adults. People were asked to rate their abilities from ‘no expertise’ to 'expert’ across a wide range of areas, including car maintenance, cooking, DIY, computers, sports, gardening, and health and fitness.
The survey revealed that although we believe we are progressive, there are certain tasks that are still owned and assigned by gender. Over 50% of men believe that they have an above-average level of expertise when it comes to car maintenance. 84% of women believe they have no expertise in this field. 20% of men actually believe they are as good as Jeremy Clarkson when it comes to driving and everything to do with cars.
Perhaps predictably, 95% of women believe they have above average expertise when it comes to cooking and 96% believe that their expertise in housekeeping is above average. Only 11% of men, however, believe that they are experts at housekeeping. 35% of women believe they are just as good at Kim and Aggie when it comes to doing the housework.
Howard Kosky, founder of HowTo said: “The survey revealed that both women and men want to learn more about tasks where they feel weakest. We’re calling on all of the experts out there to upload videos of themselves on to HowTo.tv. It could be any practical task from changing a tyre to boiling an egg.
“It is interesting to see that London is the place where the most people have the least practical skills. They seem to need help with the smallest of tasks, from tiling a bathroom to fixing a puncture. A service like HowTo.tv should really help them.”
HowTo.tv was established by Howard Kosky, managing director of broadcast specialist markettiers4dc, and Nadhim Zawahi, CEO and co-founder of YouGov, the market research agency that pioneered the use of the Internet and information technology to carry out online surveys.