WONG CASANDRA Today Online 11 Feb 16;
SINGAPORE — Out of nine international issues, respondents in Singapore were most concerned about global terrorism, according to a global survey by market research firm YouGov. The average proportion of those concerned here was also the third highest out of 17 countries, the survey found.
An average of 28.4 per cent of 980 Singapore respondents chose global terrorism to be a serious problem facing the world, 3.3 percentage points higher than the global average percentile share of concern of 25.1 per cent.
The top two countries most worried about terrorism were France and Australia at 33.7 per cent and 31 per cent respectively. Data for France was collected a week after the ISIS terror attacks in Paris, said YouGov. The attacks killed 130 and injured scores of people.
China ranked the lowest with 18.6 per cent of respondents concerned about terrorism, followed by Indonesia at 19.8 per cent. Terrorism was, nonetheless, still the top concern for respondents in China, and the second biggest concern for those in Indonesia. The survey was conducted between November and December last year, before prominent terrorism-related events took place in the region, including the bomb blasts in Jakarta and terrorism-related arrests in Malaysia last month.
A total of 18,235 respondents from countries in Asia, North America, Europe, the Middle East and Australia were polled. They had to choose from among nine issues — including economic instability, climate change, armed conflicts and spread of infectious diseases — those they considered to be serious problems facing the world. They also chose what they considered as the single most serious issue facing the world. The percentage score was then calculated as an average of the two findings so as to include both the breadth and intensity of concern, said YouGov.
After terrorism, the next issue Singapore respondents were most concerned about was climate change (14.8 per cent). This was followed by poverty, hunger, thirst (11.8 per cent) and economic instability (10.5 per cent). While the issue of infectious diseases ranked at 5th place at a low 8.5 per cent, this was the highest score out of the 17 countries surveyed.
Collectively, the top worries in Asia were mostly similar, with global terrorism, climate change, poverty, hunger, thirst, and economic instability frequently making the top five.
Respondents in Indonesia and Malaysia also ranked armed conflict among their top five concerns, while China respondents were concerned with energy scarcity (second place at 15.2 per cent). Hong Kong respondents placed more emphasis on population growth (fifth place at 7.8 per cent).
The majority of the Asian countries polled were least concerned about nuclear weapons, with average scores arranging between 3.3 to 4.7 per cent. The survey was conducted before North Korea’s nuclear bomb test last month. The exception was Malaysia as the country’s respondents were least worried about population growth.