Students’ interest in healthcare and hygiene has nearly tripled since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a King Car Cultural and Educational Foundation survey released yesterday found.
In a survey conducted from April 23 to May 10, students were asked to select three from a list of 11 global issues that they believed were “most in need of attention.”
The survey showed that 61.1 percent of respondents chose healthcare and hygiene, followed by climate change (45.8 percent), ecological conservation (33.7 percent) and the wealth gap (33.1 percent).
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
Last year’s survey found that 20.6 percent of respondents believed healthcare and hygiene was one of the world’s top concerns.
Other issues on this year’s list were international refugees, the economy and employment, culture preservation, the food crisis, energy consumption, human rights or “other.”
The students were asked which nations or regions — besides Taiwan — they thought were doing the best job of preventing the spread of COVID-19, choosing up to three options from a list of nations and regions, or “none” or “other.”
“None” was chosen by 42.2 percent of respondents, while about 20 percent said South Korea, 13.7 percent said Japan and 12.1 percent said Singapore.
When asked which nations they would most like to go to if they were to immigrate, 51.6 percent said Japan.
Other popular destinations included the US (38.6 percent), South Korea (26 percent) and Canada (22.2 percent).
When asked to rate their own “international perspective,” respondents gave an average score of 64.1 out of 100, 3.7 percentage points lower than last year’s average of 67.8, the foundation said.
In 2018, the average score respondents gave themselves was 61.4, while in 2017 it was 57.6, the foundation added.
About 60 percent of respondents this year said language was one of the greatest obstacles they encountered when trying to develop an international perspective.
Asked which nations were the friendliest toward Taiwan, with the option of selecting up to three nations, 62.6 percent of respondents said Japan, and 41.3 percent said the US.
The survey was conducted through questionnaires distributed to students in junior, senior and vocational high schools, as well as universities and colleges, the foundation said.
The survey received 6,018 valid responses — 4,201 in electronic form and 1,817 on paper — and had a confidence level of 97 percent and a margin of error of 3 percentage points, it added.
The foundation said 40.6 percent of respondents were students in senior or vocational high schools, 31.3 percent were in junior-high schools and 28.1 percent were in universities or colleges.
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