SWS: Filipinos went out only 1 to 3 times a week

MAJORITY of Filipinos went outside their houses only once, twice or thrice in the past seven days to get essentials, mainly food, according to the latest Social Weather Stations ( SWS) survey released on Wednesday.

The mobile phone survey, conducted from May 4 to 10 among 4,010 respondents, showed that 81 percent of Filipinos went out of their house in the past week to buy food only once, twice or thrice, while 17 percent went out four to seven times. Two percent of those polled said they went out eight times or more.

The same survey showed that 98 percent went out of their houses to buy medicine one to three times while 98 percent went out for financial transactions.

On average, the survey respondents went out 2.58 times to buy food, 1.29 times to buy medicine and 1.21 times for financial transactions

In Balance Luzon, 84 percent of the respondents went out one to three times to buy food. This is slightly higher than the 82 percent in Mindanao, 81 percent in Metro Manila and 76 percent in the Visayas.

The average number of times that one went out to buy food in the week referred to by the survey was 3 in the Visayas, 2.7 in Metro Manila, 2.5 in Mindanao and 2.4 in Balance Luzon.

Meanwhile, 2 percent of the respondents went out four to seven times to buy medicine.

In all areas, the respondents went out to buy medicine an average number of 1.3 times within a week.

For financial transactions, 1 percent went out of the house four to seven times and 0.1 percent went out eight times or more.

The SWS conducted phone or computer-assisted telephone interviews among respondents aged 15 years old and above. The survey had sampling error margins of ±2 percent for national percentages, ±6 percent for Metro Manila, ±2 percent for Balance Luzon, ±3 percent for the Visayas and ±3 percent for Mindanao.