Education Level and Individual Values

1.    Background

We have confirmed that there is a global trend that world citizens are inclined to expect more on governments. They prioritize disaster response than civil liberties, public health than economic recovery, and government decisions than citizens’ requests. Meanwhile, people hold that citizens’ cooperative participation is of significance under governments’ control since they emphasize more on rule of law than rule by order, cooperation-centered disinfection than leadership centered one, and citizens-centered quarantine than government-centered one. Although there is a trend regarding the government’s role amid COVID-19 in international society, the fact that no clear tendency concerning data privacy and data transparency illuminates that the privacy issues are a sensitive and controversial topic in the middle of a pandemic. In this section, we will divide global citizens into two groups according to their education level and see if the variable of it has an influence on individuals’ values.

2.    Research Topic

Generally speaking, people with different academic backgrounds have distinguished ideologies in political and economic issues. Therefore, we will reaffirm if this common sense is also applicable to our study. Moreover, if two groups of people vary in their individual values, we will observe how their values differ as to their educational level.

3.    Questionnaire Used

Survey Question SQ4: “What is the highest certificate or degree that you have completed? 1. Less than a high school diploma or its equivalent. 2. High school diploma or a high school equivalency certificate. 3. College certificate below the bachelor’s level. 4. Bachelor’s degree (e.g. B.A., B.S., LL.B.) 5. MA degree (graduate school certificate).” We categorized the former three groups as low-educated people and the latter two groups as high-educated people.

Other questions have already been quoted in previous sections.

4.    Major Outcomes

Table 1: The Number of Low-educated and High-educated Citizens in 28 Global Cities

 

The survey reports that there are 7,171 (46.8%) citizens belong to the low-educated group, and 8,141 (53.2%) people are high-educated among 15,312 global citizens. In this section, we will see if there are consistent differences in individual values between the two groups.

Figure 1: Bar Graph of Individual Value Indexes of Global Citizens by Education Levels

When it comes to the global trend of individual values, people are prone to value disaster weathering, social distancing, government decisions, along with rule of law, cooperation-centered disinfection, and citizens-centered quarantine. The results of the individual value indexes by different academic backgrounds are of interest since the result is right opposite to the data analysis results according to the economic level. For instance, in the previous analysis, most of the lower class emphasized disaster weathering, social distancing, citizens’ requests, rule of law, cooperation-centered disinfection, citizens-centered quarantine. On the other hand, most of the high-educated citizens are highlighting these values, except for citizens-centered disinfection. Low-educated citizens value more on citizens-centered disinfection than high-educated people.

Below figures are bar graphs of each index of each city. The calculation method is that the score of high-educated citizens minus that of the low-educated citizens, and therefore, if the result values are negative, it implies that the low-educated people think more highly of the corresponding ideology than high-educated individuals and vice versa. Moreover, the results below indicate that there is no consistent change in global cities, which means that some ideologies are emphasized by high-educated people, and some are highlighted by low-educated citizens.

Figure 2: Bar Graph of Global Citizens’ Civil Liberties Priority Index (CLPI) by Education Level

 

Figure 2 demonstrates that high-educated citizens gave higher scores on civil liberties than the low-educated ones in cities such as Osaka, Hong Kong, London, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Rome, Stockholm, Oslo, Sydney, Wellington, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City. On the contrary, low-educated people gave higher scores on this issue than high-educated citizens in cities such as Tokyo, Taipei, Singapore, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Lisbon, Cape Town, Moscow, Manila, Santiago, New Delhi, and Jakarta. To be specific, low-educated citizens in Santiago gave 0.68 points higher than those of the high-educated on the issue of civil liberties.

Figure 3: Bar Graph of Global Citizens’ Economy Priority Index (EPI) by Education Level
 

Figure 4: Bar Graph of Global Citizens’ Citizens Request Index (CRI) by Education Level

 

Figure 4 demonstrates that high-educated citizens gave higher scores on citizens-requests than the low-educated ones in cities such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Rome, Lisbon, Oslo, Sydney, Wellington, and Sao Paulo. On the contrary, low-educated people gave higher scores on citizens-requests than high-educated citizens in cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, Taipei, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, London, Cape Town, Stockholm, Moscow, Manila, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Mexico City, New Delhi, and Jakarta. To be specific, low-educated citizens in Jakarta gave 0.49 points higher than those of the high-educated on the issue of citizens’ requests.

Figure 5: Bar Graph of Global Citizens’ Rule of Law Index (RLI) by Education Level

 

The most outstanding result shows in Figure 5, which demonstrates high-educated citizens in most cities gave higher scores on the issue of rule of law. In contrast to other figures, Figure 5 is filled with blue bars, which implies that low-educated people gave lower scores on this issue than the high-educated citizens. Nevertheless, low-educated individuals in some cities, such as Tokyo, Taipei, London, Cape Town, New Delhi, and Jakarta, gave higher scores on the issue of rule of law than those of the high-educated. Still, we cannot conclude that low-educated citizens in these cities highlight more on rule of law since the numerical differences are trivial compared to other issues. For instance, low-educated citizens in New Delhi gave only 0.35 points higher than those of the high-educated, whereas high-educated citizens in Oslo gave 0.79 points higher than those of the low-educated. Therefore, in-depth quantitative analysis is required to affirm if high-educated people are emphasizing more on rule of law than the low-educated citizens.

Figure 6: Bar Graph of Global Citizens’ Cooperation-centered Disinfection Index (CDI) by Education Level

 

Figure 6 demonstrates that high-educated citizens gave higher scores on cooperation-centered disinfection than the low-educated ones in cities such as Vienna, Oslo, and Wellington. So-called cooperation-centered disinfection lies in citizens’ active trust and cooperation in terms of recovering from the disaster. On the contrary, low-educated people gave higher scores on this ideology than high-educated citizens in cities such as Tokyo, Los Angeles, Toronto, Cape Town, Santiago, Mexico City, New Delhi, and Jakarta. To be specific, high-educated citizens in Vienna gave 0.92 points higher than those of the low-educated on the issue of cooperative disinfection.

Figure 7: Bar Graph of Global Citizens’ Citizens-centered Quarantine Index (CQI) by Education Level

 

Figure 7 demonstrates that high-educated citizens in most cities gave higher scores on citizens-centered quarantine than the low-educated. While in some cities, such as New Delhi and Jakarta, higher points were given by low-educated individuals. So-called citizens-centered quarantine means that the citizens are the main actors in the prevention of an epidemic. Low-educated citizens in New Delhi gave 0.49 points higher than those of the high-educated on the issue of citizens-centered qurantine.

Figure 8: Bar Graph of Global Citizens’ Data Privacy Index (DPI) by Education Level

 

Figure 8 demonstrates that higher scores were given by high-educated people on data privacy than the low-educated. This is because the number of blue bars is larger than red bars and their height is much higher than those of red bars. So-called data privacy, in contrast to revealing the movement history of infected people in detail, is protecting people’s personal information, and not to treat patients like enemies. High-educated citizens in Mexico City gave 0.79 points higher than those of the low-educated on the issue of privacy.

5.    Summaries and Further Tasks

a.     Data analysis shows that the high-educated gave higher scores on the necessity of government decisions, social distancing, overcoming the disaster, cooperation, and data privacy in average.

b.     The most outstanding result in this data analysis of each city is that higher scores on rule of law were given by the high-educated in most cities. Even though some cities’ low-educated citizens gave higher scores than the high-educated, the numerical differences are slight.

c.     The study is limited to descriptive research, and therefore, a more detailed explanative investigation is required to further understand the global citizens’ consciousness presented above. Moreover, further quantitative analysis should be down to assure if there is any significance in this subject.