Americans rank Britain as the best country in the world, polls show – with New Zealand in second place… and the US in third
- Britain was the most popular with Americans in the US News & World Report survey
Americans consider Britain the best country in the world, a poll has found.
The US News & World Report investigation – which collects data from respondents around the world in a range of categories – found that American readers rated Britain better than anywhere else in the world.
It marked a rise of eight places in the rankings, beating New Zealand in second place and the US itself in third place.
When data was collected from all respondents worldwide, Switzerland came out on top, with Britain in ninth place.
The ranking was compiled by identifying a set of 73 ‘characteristics’ of countries: terms that can be used to describe a country and that are also relevant to the success of a modern nation.
Various attributes and nations were then presented in a survey of more than 17,000 people from around the world from March 17 to June 12, in which participants rated whether they associated an attribute with a nation.
A look at which countries Americans rank as the best in the world, compared to what the rest of the world thinks
Each country was scored on each of 73 country characteristics based on a collection of individual survey responses.
The more the impression was given that a country represents a certain characteristic relative to the average, the higher the attribute score of that country, and vice versa.
These scores have been converted into a scale that is comparable across the board.
The attributes were grouped into 10 thematic sub-rankings that went into the Best Country rankings: Adventure, Agility, Cultural Influence, Entrepreneurship, Heritage, Movers, Open for Business, Power, Quality of Life and Social Purpose.
Britain was rated particularly highly in entrepreneurship, where it ranked fourth, as well as fifth for power and sixth for cultural influence.
The site outlined some of Britain’s impact: ‘The country has a long history of significant contributions to the arts and sciences.
‘William Shakespeare is considered one of the greatest writers in the history of English literature.
‘British scientists discovered gravity, hydrogen and penicillin and developed theories of aerodynamics and natural evolution. The country is still at the forefront of science and technology.
‘Stephen Hawking did groundbreaking work in the field of cosmology and computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.’