Indiana Residents Share What Makes Them Proud To Be a Hoosier
We asked readers of Fishers Digest if they’re proud to be a Hoosier. Here’s what they thought.
Fishers Digest in partnership with SMARI, a Fishers market research firm, did a poll asking thousands of Fishers readers if they are proud to call themselves Hoosiers. The results show 65% are proud to be Hoosiers, while 17% said they are not proud and 18% felt indifferent. So turns out, most of you are!… with some caveats.
If you’ve never seen a wordcloud before, here’s how it works: The larger a word is, the more often it was mentioned in our poll last Friday. It’s a nuanced view of what drives both pride and dissatisfaction among Indiana residents.
Why we chose this question
Indiana ranks 40th/50 for happiness in the US, according to WalletHub. In general, people who live here have a lower perception of Indiana vs how people from other states view us. But happiness does not necessarily measure pride, so we wanted to ask that specific question knowing all of the above.
Key Takeaways
- We are proud of our neighbors, having four seasons, family bonds, cost of living, hospitality, sports, and many more (see the list below) 💪
- Feelings on politics and culture clash, and are hard to put as positive or negative. There is everything from all love, positive, negative, and even hatred
- We aren’t fans of our infrastructure or traffic 😂
Themes/words ranked from most to least mentioned
The following list shows the
- GRAY/BLACK = Positive. People love this about being a Hoosier!
- BLUE = This was a polarizing response, responses were all over the place from love to really dislike.
- RED = Most felt negatively about it
One last thing. Let’s take culture for example. We grouped culture as a variety of things. For example, some people mentioned they love that we are midwest nice. While some mentioned they hate our culture of book banning. Because these both fell under the culture category, we tagged it as polarizing. These are just two examples of many we received.
- Politics
- Culture
- Friendly
- Four seasons
- Family
- Cost-of-living
- Entertainment
- Convenient travel
- Education
- Hoosier Hospitality
- Sports
- Conservative
- Greenspace
- Healthcare
- Proud
- Small-town
- Birthplace
- Hard-working
- Infrastructure
- Natural beauty
- Safe
- State parks
- Architecture
- Art
- City life
- Easy going
- Economy
- Farms
- Food
- History
- Honest
- Housing
- Outdoor activities
- Roads
- Rural life
- Traffic
Closing thoughts
This was a ton of fun to work together on with SMARI. And we have more planned. But it would not have been possible without everyone who reads and participates in the Fishers Digest newsletter — so THANK YOU! You’re the really heroes here.
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