Monday, April 11, 2011

Most Facebook Users Would Go Barefoot in Public: Poll

About half of Facebook users would "almost always" go barefoot in public if it were socially acceptable and the weather was nice, according to a recent online poll answered by 533 respondents on the social media site. Another quarter of responders replied that they would go barefoot "some of the time" under the same circumstances. The poll begins to give a better view of people's perceptions of going barefoot and it's societal acceptance. (The results hold a 95% confidence level with 4% margin of error.)

Methodology: Asking the Right Question

A barefoot shopper. (Photo by
colorblindPICASO on Flickr)
I've been very interested for a while in getting some kind of good data about people's impressions of barefoot living. As founder and president of The Primalfoot Alliance, I very strongly believe in advocating for those who want to go barefoot - even in public places where so many barefooters are discriminated against. The first thing I wanted to find out when researching all this is how many people actually would go barefoot if given the chance. Knowing that could influence how much effort The Primalfoot Alliance should put into our...um, efforts.

But what should be the first question? Well, I have my feelers out all over the internet when it comes to hearing people's thoughts on bare feet. I'm friends with numerous people who live with and without shoes, I watch a Twitter search related to all things "barefoot," and I get daily emails of Google search results related to the topic. A consistent message that I hear from a lot of people out there is their desire to go barefoot if it were only "socially acceptable" or if they "could." Furthermore, many people have told me that they would go barefoot more often if they lived in a better climate - specifically, warmer conditions. There are other factors that people take into account as reasons they don't go barefoot, but those two seem to be the foundational reasons why going barefoot isn't an option for them. I figure that for every person that says it, there may be many others who at least are thinking it.

So I asked the question, "Would you go totally barefoot in public if it was socially acceptable and the weather was nice?" I included the caveat for nice weather to make it more reasonable to imply that the basic conditions for personal comfort are favorable enough that they'd feel comfortable going barefoot in the first place. Notice that I made no mention of sharp objects, diseases or any other issues that naysayers bring up against going without shoes. I wanted for respondents to answer while keeping those concerns in mind. Finally, a key word in this question is 'totally.' I thought it was important to clearly state that there would be nothing on their feet. This eliminates the possibilities of socks, flip flops, minimalist footwear or anything else being considered.

The answers were written to be simple and few in number. I wanted to get a good cross section of responses in which anyone and everyone could find a comfortable answer. Respondents could choose "No, thank you," "Sure, some of the time," or "Absolutely, almost always."

The Results: Surprising Even to Me

It turns out that one out of every two people on Facebook would frequently go barefoot in public if their perception of social acceptance was achieved. Furthermore, about three out of four people would go without shoes publicly at least some of the time. Only about a quarter of the respondents indicated that they still would not go barefoot.

But there's more to these results: One thing I wanted to know was how skewed the results might be based on the ratio of responses from my friends versus those who I'm not friends with on the service. Basically, did those who know me and my barefoot lifestyle mess up the numbers. Interestingly enough, the responses were almost identical all the way across the board. The biggest deviation in responses from friends versus non-friends was about 2%. Not bad.

Let's look at some charts. First, here's a pie graph of the overall answers to the question with all 533 Facebook users who responded represented.:
Next up, here's a visual breakdown of each the responses by those who I'm friends with on Facebook (red) versus those I'm not (green).:
A full 83% (444 people) of the 533 total responses came from people with whom I am NOT friends on Facebook. The remaining 17% (89) are.

So how accurate are these results? I wondered that myself. Using a sample size calculator from Creative Research Systems, I determined that for Facebook's more than 500 million active users (using 500 million as the population size), the results hold a 95% confidence level with 4.25% margin of error.

Conclusions

With everything I've written and presented so far, what does all this actually mean? I have drawn a few conclusions of my own, but yours may vary. (Don't berate me because your conclusions don't agree with mine.):

  • Because this poll was based only on Facebook users, it's hard to know exactly how it translates to the general populace. Although there are 500 million users on Facebook worldwide, only slightly more than 116 million of them are from the U.S. It's difficult to know how breakdowns of nationality, age, gender, political and other characteristics vary between Facebook's user population who responded and the general population. Without anything better to go on at this time, however, I believe it's reasonable to draw some conclusions about the general population from a good sample of 500 million users. After all, that's more than the entire population of the United States.
  • If one questions whether going barefoot in public is "socially acceptable," I have to conclude that it probably IS. If you assume that those who are willing to do it are fine with others doing it, too - a reasonable assumption - that means that most of the public really are okay with others' public barefootedness. The number may even be higher if you consider that those who don't want to go barefoot themselves may still be fine with others doing it, though there's no data to support that assumption (i.e. That's another question to ask).
  • There is widespread mistaken assumption that most of us are opposed to people going barefoot in public. It goes back to the notion of perception versus reality. People may not think it's socially acceptable, so they don't go barefoot in public. The problem is that a LOT of people think that and therefore the perception continues. I'd bet that this perception translates to business managers and security who think they're keeping the other patrons from being offended. It's pretty likely that a vast majority of the other patrons actually don't care. In all actuality, they would probably rather be barefoot, too.
  • I find these results to be VERY surprising. I expected that there could be 20-30% of people who would go barefoot most of the time, but not half of all responders. The fact that three out of four people would go barefoot in public at least some of the time tells me that people do have a respect for their feet. The results back up two big sentiments that I hear on a regular basis: "I LOVE going barefoot," and "I used to go barefoot all the time as a kid." Even though they say these things, they DON'T go barefoot in public. Maybe the reason for this is because of perceived social norms. That said...
  • We need to educate people that going barefoot in public is okay and that others are supportive. If people who prefer to go barefoot understand that they have the support of many others behind them, the visibility of bare feet in public could skyrocket in the next few years. As more people choose to go without shoes in public, there will be more pressure on businesses to allow them as patrons.
  • We need to educate businesses that many people would prefer to go barefoot while out and about and that they are not a threat to the bottom line. I really do believe that many managers and security base much of their discrimination off baseless thinking that other patrons will be offended by seeing people go barefoot. I've experienced it myself when an art gallery manager -- after I shot down all his other reasons for denying me -- told me he didn't want other patrons to be offended...in an art gallery that had a number of potentially offensive/disturbing pieces on display.
  • More research and polling needs to be done about these topics. There's so much more I'd like to know about people's stances on bare feet. For instance, what are people's primary reasons for opposing the idea of going barefoot in public? What do people see as the primary use for shoes? Are men or women more accepted when they go barefoot? The clearer the data we can get on all this, the better.
What do you think of these results? Do these responses surprise you? Do you think I made a mistake and these results aren't reliable? What can we take away from this poll? Please leave your responses in the comments section below.

22 comments:

  1. I'm quite surprised myself about these results! I hope these results accurately reflect the thinking of the general population.

    Regarding your following comment: "I believe that many managers and security base much of their discrimination off baseless thinking that other patrons will be offended by seeing people go barefoot." I also believe this is true for many managers. But I also believe that many managers are simply afraid of lawsuits or mistakenly believe in health codes against barefoot customers, and that these managers would tolerate barefoot customers if it wasn't for these unjustified fears. This is especially true in places such as gas station stores for example, where how a customer looks in front of others is not as important as in places like restaurants, museums, upscale stores, etc. Managers need to be educated about ALL issues related to public barefooting, which includes perception of other customers, liability, supposed health codes, and others.

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  2. My local food co-op store requires shoes in the store. Their reason is that if something happens to someones bare feet. They are sure that the insurance company will tell them to make customers put shoes on. I've told them insurance companies don't require this. The store is just afraid of "what could happen", and they seem to think the risk is higher with bare feet then bare hands. They say they want to allow it, but they put the blame on the insurance company to keep the shoe required policy active.

    Usually the store that has the shoes required sign. Also has shirt required on the same sign. Clearly the shirt required is a social thing. I think the shoes required tends to be more of a liability issue for the stores of broken glass on floor, etc.

    At the co-op I have found on Sunday evenings the management staff is not working, and no one bothers me. So I still shop once a week bare foot. I've done this many times, and have never hurt my feet. So where is the risk I ask ? I don't see it.

    The interesting thing is another food store not far away. Is very friendly to my bare feet. They are even friendly to someone coming in the store with roller blades on. The co-op will not allow either of those activities. Heck the other store that is friendly to roller blades even has a picture on the checkout screen of a customer in roller blades.

    Why is one store barefoot friendly, but the neighboring store is not ? The answer is that the mind set is different to each store owner/manager. I find the store that is BF friendly has far superior customer service.

    The only stores that really pest me in my area are grocery stores, but not all grocery stores interestingly.

    I find most interesting stores concerned about BF are concerned about the bottom of the bare foot, but not the top. Flip flops, sandals are OK, but bare feet are not OK.....

    The above numbers in the post entry don't mean much to me. This is a shoe addicted society, and the shoe companies will spend millions of dollars on advertising to keep it that way. Nuff said.

    I think we need to find some loop holes in our legal system to challenge these shoes required policies. We need a big case to judge in our favor to set a new trend across the country saying these policies are unacceptable......

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  3. One thing I noticed that could affect the validity of the data is only people interested in the question would take the time to answer it. This question of course would attract barefoot enthusiasts, like myself, to answer the question, while being left largely ignored by the general Facebook public. This is a very good idea though. The main reason I don't go to class barefoot is I don't want my professors to think I'm strange or unprofessional, since I might end up doing research for them some day.

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  4. I am already barefoot all the time. For me it is not an issue. I am sure a lot people wish they could go barefoot. The social stigma is probably the strongest thing that stops people from going barefoot. I remember the first time going barefoot in public was not easy. But Then I found out that most people had nothing bad to say about it or did not noticed. Being barefoot is not strange. You cannot live in fear and let other people run your life. Besides, people respect people you stand for what they believe.

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  5. It's not easy to run valid test. Form of the question and way of asking has a tremendous impact on the data. Selection of the responders was not proper. I consider this test inconclusive.

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  6. Thanks for so much effort in this survey. So much of the discrimination of living barefoot - especially in public - is based on false "health" information & stigma from the hippie movement in the 60s. People have a comfort level with footwear and can't believe that most footwear is so damaging & unhealthy - especially women's shoes. In addition to hurting the bones & weakening the muscles of the foot, footwear breeds fungus & bacteria - thus the "smell" - not an issue with unshod feet. Being barefoot is not only comfortable, but much better for foot health & strength. Just don't try to tell that to shoe stores or most podiatrists. Being barefoot in public should be much more socially acceptable & with knowledgeable information from people like you I'm sure it will be as time passes.
    Thanks Again...

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  7. Just one question. Those of you who go barefoot in cities, how on earth do you cope with the pain and the blisters? I understand that one's feet do eventually toughen up, but I for one am not prepared to go through the process - it would take too long and I do not want to be hobbling around while it happens. I'm content with fairly minimalist footwear, and I certainly can't wear heels of any sort. If I lived in an area where one could walk on grass all the time, I might consider it.

    Having said that, I was appalled to hear about the hostility towards those who choose to go barefoot. I think it must be an American thing, because I've never heard of it happening here in the UK (and I did at one point have a friend who used to go barefoot for most of the summer - he never had any problems from other people). What people choose to wear or not to wear on their feet is surely their own business. It's not as if feet were indecent, after all!

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  8. @Elinor - I have no problems with pain and only once a blister, and that was more from not walking at all rather than being barefoot and I only got one the first day. Your feet toughen up really quickly. And you shouldn't have to go through pain or hobble to do it either. Just build up to it, don't powerwalk for a half-hour the very first day! Walk where there is a cement path bordered by grass, and walk on one, then the other a couple of minutes each. Do it a few times a week for a couple of weeks and you will find that they will toughen up nicely. Being able to walk on sharp pebbles and withstand nasty prickles takes longer, but blisters are not common problems going barefoot - that is a shod problem!

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  9. I grew up in North Carolina in a basically rural area/small town. In the summer most all kids went barefoot, as did a lot of teens and younger adults. I pretty much went without shoes in warm weather until I was 22 or so, and then it just seemed to go out of fashion, so to speak. I suppose for one thing maybe stores began enforcing a "No Bare Feet" policy, but certain brands of shoes have become status symbols, and they're aggressively marketed to younger people. I am 36 now and think it's sort of a shame that it's not much done anymore.

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  10. Well the problem with this poll is that it allows responders to self-select. As I learned in my Stats in Social Science class back in college, this reneders the results unreliable. I can assure you from personal experience that the actual percentage of people who would answer 'yes almost always' is much lower.

    I know this because I moved to New Zealand several years ago. Here it is perfectly socially acceptable for kids, teens and adults to go barefoot in public. There are no signs prohibiting it and personal injury lawsuits aren't allowed in NZ so no stores worry about getting sued if someone stubs a toe. Kids go to primary school (elementary) barefoot up to age 11-13, and I mean probably 75-95% of them are barefoot everyday all day at school.

    Even on a rainy winter day in the 55F range you'll see at least a couple people barefoot at the supermarket and kids in hoodies and rain jackets with long pants still in bare feet.

    Yet even in nice summer weather nowhere near 50% of people are barefoot at the mall or supermarket. I'd say probably 50-75% of primary school kids are but only maybe 20-25% of teens and young adults and only a handful of people over 40. The percentages all go up out in rural areas and small towns, but it still isn't 50% of adults, even young adults.

    And that's not the the percentage of people doing it all the time. I'd bet even here in NZ that number is more like 1 in 10 teens/young adults. Even in a place where people grow up barefoot most of the time, are used to being barefoot in public and no one gives you a second glance for it, the majority of people over the age of 12 still choose to wear at least flip-flops (which are the most common footwear choice in NZ).

    I have to think that for Americans, who weren't raised spending most days barefoot, the numbers would be much lower.

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  11. What will it take to bring back the barefoot ways people had in the 70s and 80s. You never see anyone going barefoot anymore.
    I saw one BF woman coming out of a Family Dollar Store in South St. Paul Mn and I asked her if she had any problems in the store. She said they made her leave because she was barefoot. I was barefoot too and I was afraid to go in. This is just wrong. They're our feet, why can't they let us choose our footwear or lack of it. We need to start a protest or something. Barefoot Fan of South St. Paul.

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  12. I was lucky, I guess that I grew up in the USA in the 1970s. The crwod I ran with went barefoot most of the summer.

    The summer of 1972 I can remember going barefoot to school the last day of school and went shoeless until school started in the fall.

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  13. I think America used to be a lot more barefoot friendly perhaps 100 years and more ago. I've seen many paintings of kids going to school barefoot, and even adults barefoot. I suspect a lot of the negativity towards it come from the Great Depression in the '30s when barefoot meant you were poor, the hippie movement of the 60's, and somewhat from the shoe companies pushing their 'cool' shoes on the public.

    I suspect the numbers would be fairly high (perhaps 50% or more) of people who would go barefoot in stores if they didn't fear being run out. The health department 'law' doesn't exist in any state in the U.S., but companies continue to post the "...by order of the Health Department" signs as a way to make it sound legit. As long as the word isn't mainstream, people will believe that there actually *is* a health department rule against it. If we could get businesses to post signs like this in their windows, that would help a LOT:

    http://www.barefooters.org/1997-winter/gifs/jfy_bf_ok.jpg

    I actually had a neighbor kid giving me a hard time recently about being barefoot in public. His logic was that it wasn't 'decent'. I suspect that's what his parents / church taught him. He might have a hard time in a place like New Zealand. I would fit in nicely there! Might just have to visit some day. ;-)

    All we can do is spread the word. There are lots of barefooters and even closet barefooters out there, and lots of sites about barefooting. http://www.barefooters.org/ is just one of 'em. The more people know, the more people will venture out shoeless and store owners and trolls will have to let them in.

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  14. A follow-up comment that I forgot earlier:

    Someone asked what would it take to get people to go barefoot more like they did years ago. The best idea I've had would be to have a celebrity be habitually barefoot in a weekly TV show. It could be part of their character, and others on the show could bring up the same questions and comments we all hear. Eventually, the myth would die with the other characters realizing that it's acceptable, and there are no laws or other problems with it. It would have to be someone who is either already popular or would become popular during the series that would make it 'cool' to go barefoot again.

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  15. Frankly, I go barefoot because I WANT to and if it offends people, TOUGH! I get grossed out seeing people with tatoos all over their arms, back, and legs. I get grossed out over multiple body piercings. I get grossed out by large overweight people. I keep my comments to myself. I wish those that are offended by barefeet would do the same.

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  16. I'm in my late 50's and am discovering the joys of walking barefoot in public in the warm weather. It just feels great having no shoes on and feeling the surfaces under your feet. It is definitely more natural and is very liberating. I am still a bit self-conscious about walking barefoot around my neighborhood for a long distance but I am slowly overcoming this. I walked to the convenience store today barefoot and will probably venture out more often barefoot as long as the summer weather permits. I am finding that very few people notice that I'm barefoot and if they do they don't even acknowledge it. Eventually I hope to be brave enough to walk everywhere barefoot in the summer but that I think that will take awhile.

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    Replies
    1. There's nothing better than going barefoot in the neighborhood. Jeans and barefoot...I am planning on driving somewhere away from home with no shoes and see where I end up. Barefoot at the park, beach, store. Love it.

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    2. Wow...I feel the same way. Did you do it?

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  17. Ищу девушку 18-25 лет, постоянно ходящую босиком. Я сам хожу босиком постоянно. 89168702026.

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  18. I got tired of being asked to leave places because I didn't have shoes on so I designed a pair of soleless shoes called Barebottom Shoes. So far no one has stopped me from shopping or eating while wearing them. It's a way to work with society at least until they become more acceptable. And they look great too!

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