Youth tend to loosen their integrity
Despite respecting integrity, young people are prone to compromise their value, particularly for the sake of family and friends
Hanoi, August 4, 2015 – 41% Vietnamese youth are willing to lie to protect family income and 20% are willing to violate the law for the sake of family and friends.
These are two of the key findings from Vietnam Youth Integrity 2014 (YIS 2014) jointly conducted by Towards Transparency (TT), Center for Community Support Development Studies (CECODES) and Centre of Live and Learn for Environment and Community (Live&Learn).
Youth are more sceptical and find it more difficult to practice integrity
When facing an integrity-challenging decision, young Vietnamese tend to compromise. Compared to the first YIS conducted in 2011, youth surveyed in 2014 tend to place family income and wealth over integrity (35% in 2014 compared to 31% in 2011). They are also more willing to lie for the sake of family income and loyalty to friends (41% in 2014 compared to 35% in 2011).
At the same time, youth are becoming more pessimistic about the integrity of public service providers. The 2014 “very good” ratings for traffic police and public health were half of the 2011 ratings, dropping from 12% to 6% (traffic police) and from 11% to 6% (public health). Significantly, more educated youth (having completed upper secondary school) are more critical, rating a maximum of 7% “very good” across the surveyed public service providers while 19% give a rating of “very bad”.
“The nearly 3-year-gap between the two surveys (in 2011 and 2014) helps the research team better identify integrity trends amongst youth. A comparison across key findings shows that: young people are more sceptical about the integrity of their surrounding environment. They have not felt any positive impact from the official education programme on integrity and anti-corruption. This fact explains one of the most significant findings of YIS 2014: when having to choose between integrity and loyalty to family and friends, youth consider violating integrity in such situations as ‘acceptable’ ”.
Dang Hoang Giang, Deputy Director of CECODES and co-author of YIS 2014.
Youth are willing to participate in anti-corruption initiatives
Though continuing to face difficulties in choosing integrity, 87% of Vietnamese youth surveyed in 2014 are willing to participate in anti-corruption initiatives. Interestingly, the less educated youth (up to completing primary school) are more optimistic with 84% believing that young people play an important role in the fight against corruption. This is a significant increase compared to 67% in this group in 2011.
Internet and social media have increasingly influenced youth perspectives on integrity: among the more educated youth, 92% (in 2014) believe that the internet impacts their perspective on integrity. The numbers of less educated youth sharing this view also significantly increased: from 2% in 2011 to 16% in 2014 for internet and from 3% to 24% for social media.
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Transparency International (TI) is the global civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption.
Towards Transparency (TT) is the national contact of Transparency International in Vietnam, working to contribute to the fight against corruption in Vietnam.
[Interactive] Learn more about 5 interesting findings in YIS 2014.
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Nguyen Thu Huong
Towards Transparency
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