[Sarastro]

All surveys like this are worthless. Reason: people's individual preferences not only vary, but may even be opposite. They cannot be combined into one equal-weighted-multi-attribute ranking scale. (Kenneth Arrow got the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for demonstrating this, inter alia.)

An example: population density is one factor in this survey. But some people prefer wide open spaces and few neighbors. Other people prefer living in the city amongst many neighbors.

The only sensible way to use the types of data incorporated into this "study" would be to provide an on-line facility for each individual to say whether a given factor is important to him/her and whether it is positive or negative, then calculate a personal ranking. Everyone's would differ, but would reflect his/her view of life, not some clerk's at a firm like Morgan Quitno,

[Huck]

Well, it's not totally worthless. It's a nice conversation starter, which is how I took it. Sort of like those Top 10 albums of all time surveys, or most beautiful woman surveys. Just fun to kibbitz about it.