What worries you?

A few weeks ago, I was handed an interesting Pulse Asia survey entitled, “June 2025 Nationwide Survey on Filipinos’ Urgent Personal and National Concerns, and the National Administration’s Performance Ratings.”

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Aside from election surveys, Pulse Asia and other polling firms are known to come up with very interesting research that has nothing to do with voting preferences. SWS, for instance, comes up with its self poverty surveys. In this case, I found the Pulse Asia survey on “Urgent Personal and National Concerns” very interesting because it was conducted after the midterm elections and before the State of the Nation Address (SONA). They are useful for governance and policymaking, not just for campaign managers and crafting slogans and jingles.

The survey, conducted between June 26 and 30, 2025, was based on 1,200 “representative adults 18 years old and above” and has a 95 percent confidence level. The respondents were asked to enumerate both personal and national concerns but for the purpose of this article I will just focus on responses about personal concerns. The respondents were asked to list a maximum of three personal concerns and to rank them in order of urgency (“Alin po ang unang pinakamabilis na gusto ninyong maisagawa?”).

Topping the list is “To stay healthy and avoid illnesses” which nationally was picked by 64 percent of the respondents. This was followed closely by “To have a secure and well-paying job or source of income” which was the urgent concern of 53 percent of those surveyed. It should be noteworthy that having a well-paying job was ranked first by more people (28 percent) compared to personal health (24 percent).