What do the YouGov Leaderboard numbers mean?
In our leaderboard we present two figures for each topic; the score and the volume. Together these figures are intended to indicate the overall public feeling about a topic: whether it’s positive or negative, and the relative importance of the topic.
The score indicates whether people feel positively or negatively about a topic, so if Gordon Brown had a score of -350, this would indicate an overall feeling of negative opinion as the score is the NET score of all tygs received about Gordon Brown. The ‘-350’ number is calculated by subtracting the proportion of negative tygs about Gordon Brown (4.5% of ALL tygs) from the proportion of positive tygs about Gordon Brown (1% of ALL tygs). 1% minus 4.5% gives Gordon Brown a score of -350.
The volume gives an indication of the topics that are discussed most frequently, and indicates the total number of tygs received about a topic, whether the tygs are positive or negative. If Gordon Brown had a Volume of 550, this means that 5.5% of all tygs received in the period were about Gordon Brown.
To indicate recent trends in the information we have also highlighted a change figure for both the score and volume. The change communicates the change in the figure compared with the same period immediately before.
