Analyzing IPS Survey: 1 In 5 Young Singaporeans Wants To Emigrate, Essay Shows.

Analyse the article Reappraising The Daily Express:  ‘Nearly 1 in 5 young Singaporeans wants to emigrate’.

Overview of the survey

In September 28, 2018, The Yahoo News published an article regarding a survey related to the emigration of the population of the Singapore in the recent times. The report claimed that nearly one on five of the Singaporeans among the age of 19 to 30 belonging from the Republic wishes to emigrate while the others considers the chances or the possibilities to emigrate within the upcoming years as per the survey analysis. The report contained data from the findings of the survey that was furthermore released by the Institute of Policy Studies or IPS. Carried out from the period of June to November 2016, more than 2000 eligible participant responded to the survey questions via the face to face interviews. The article highlighted some of the key questions related to the emigration chances and the attitudes of the young Singaporeans like the key predictors of the attitudes, the presence of any clear archetypes of the young population of the Singapore and more. The overview of the survey conducted for the research purpose included factors of demographics like age, gender, level of education, income of the household and the status of the employment. The corresponding variables of the survey analysis encircles around the social norms to the emigration, the socio economic security from emigration, the ability towards the process and the relative deprivation from the foreign talents. The article furthermore reveals some of the key outcomes of the respondents regarding their intention to emigrate on permanent or for better opportunities (The Straits Times 2018). According to the media release, factors like family, friends, public health and safety are rooted in the minds of the people in the country which projected the importance of the educational opportunities, medical care and the political stability in the research survey. The article furthermore illustrated that 42.2 percent have agreed towards being the permanent residents overseas while the remaining percentage of people preferred being the active citizen of the Singapore.

The IPS survey on the immigration attitudes targeted the following factors.

1. The National pride and the life satisfaction

The article revealed the improvements in the level of the national pride and the satisfaction of life regarding the sufficiency of the jobs and the opportunities for the people in the Singapore in the coming 10 years (The Online Citizen 2018). The survey illustrated that more than 79.9% of the respondents preferred being the citizen of their home country, 77% felt that their home country is a better place for permanent residence and 58% reported about their confidence regarding the economic prospects and the GDP of Singapore.

2. The Cluster Analysis

The cluster analysis for the research was conducted and explained in the article for the development of the archetypes of the youth population of Singapore depending on their preferences and the attitudes of emigration (Nearly 1 in 5 Singaporeans want to emigrate: survey 2018). In response to the survey conducted by IPS, and as stated by this article by Yahoo news, four of the major cluster was furthermore generated in the label of disconnected stayers among the range (n=637, 31.6%), the flourishing stayers ranging among (n=585, 29.1%) and the disconnected label (n=234, 11.6%) and finally the explorer (n=557, 27.7%). Nicholas Walliman in his book Social Research Methods, illustrates the core areas related to the social science research curriculum together with the summarization of the practical job of the collection of the data or the information for the research study in the domain of academically competent (Walliman 2015). His research methodology contradicts with the illustration of the article in explanation which took the method of cluster sampling as the primary base of detection of the level of the intention for emigration of the youth generation of Singapore (Ziguras and Gribble 2015). The article furthermore explores on the moderate and the high level of the subjectivity of the context of the wellbeing  of the population connecting the economic future of the country regrading all the four denoted clusters in the article. With the effective choice of the use of these cluster indicators for the factors of emigration, the estimated collected data revealed that there were no such differences prevailing on the basis of the socio economic status and the level of the education with the highest wishes or the intention regrading emigration.

Factors related to social norms, socio-economic security, and relative deprivation from foreign talents

The figure above illustrates the factors and the comparison of the cluster demographics in respect to the survey analysis of the two years 2010 and 2016. The figure explained the cluster with the factor of the highest immigration and with the level of the socio economic status, the percentage of the English speakers and the comparison with the other factors of the clusters.

3. The Foreign Talent

The sampling variables regarding the level of the measurement for the analysis in the article furthermore revealed the belief of benefits from the foreign talent with 62.5% respondents towards the aim of the development of the country with the rise from 45.4% to 55.3% in the current year (The Online Citizen 2018). The increased number of responses represented the social cohesions and the long term commitments of the immigrants towards the cohesiveness of the society as the stepping stone. The article highlighted the notion or the concept of to much foreign talent in Singapore as one of the major causes that the respondents believe that they should move to other countries.

4. The attitudes of the emigration

Earl Babbie in his book , ‘The practise of social research’ deals with the social theories and the links among the research and the theories targeting some of the theoretical paradigms for shaping the inquiry and the determination of the interpretation of the research study. His book constructs the exact purpose and the specificity of the research design and the execution which aligns with the current topic of discussion as explained by the article (Babbie 1998). The positive predictors of the survey included social norms among the friends and the family, the self-rated ability towards emigration and the personal values like the attitudes, hard works and the ambitions that are considered essential towards the succeeding in Singapore (Teng and Leong 2017). As per the negative predictors, factors such as the sense of the  national pride, the life satisfaction levels and the emigration and the examination of the possibility reflected the level of interest of the emigration of the people of Singapore. The article explained that the study reported 27.4% of the population who strongly agreed to emigrate for enjoying a high social status (The Straits Times 2018).

In respect to the increasing number of respondents aiming towards emigration out of Singapore, the education minister of the country, Ong Ye Kung stated the need or the requirement to bring the foreign talent in the areas encircling the software programming and re rebalance of the education system of the country for meeting the future demands. I believe that talents are very short in every parts of the world, according to the software programmers we tend to let the talent in due to the lack of the critical mass for the sector to flourish. Though it is tough for the government to train the citizens and the youths of the Singapore for the high end jobs so that the rate of emigration lessens but these will eventually take some time. As per the reports by the newspaper articles, more than 54% of the employees of the IT sector has already been flooded with the foreign talents and welcoming more of the foreign talents will tend to shrink the job market for the locals (Lim and Leong 2017). According to the yearly survey conducted by IPS, the youth population believe the notion of the foreign talent and their contribution to the development of the economic status of Singapore.

Published in the article by the digital news on October 6, 2018 the locals of the Singapore refers to the 2000 local people among the age bar of 19 to 30 who are the permanent residents of the country. The survey by IPS included the Singaporeans and the permanent residents as well as the foreign workers in the place of the employment (The Straits Times 2018). These survey contradicts with the method identified and described in the book ‘social research methods’ by Alan Bryman (Bryman 2016). This is because the inclusion of both the permanent residents of the Singapore and the foreign employees had an adverse effect on the results of the survey question regarding the  attitudes of the emigration and the context of the foreign talents.

In a nutshell, the media release on the emigration attitudes of the young population of the Singapore the response of the survey tended the agreement of the individuals regarding the social norms and their believe towards the process of the improvement of one’s social status and the socio economic security with a higher sense of national pride and the life satisfaction levels in the upcoming 5 years.

References

Babbie, E.R., 1998. The practice of social research (Vol. 112). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth publishing company.

Bryman, A., 2016. Social research methods. Oxford university press.

Institute of Policy Studies (2018). Survey on Emigration Attitudes of Young Singaporeans (2016).Singapore: Institute of Policy Studies, National University of Singapore, pp.1-111.

Lim, C. and Leong, C.H., 2017. Content analysis on Singapore’s immigration rhetoric in the media. International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation, 6(3), p.179.

Nearly 1 in 5 Singaporeans want to emigrate: survey. 2018. Nearly 1 in 5 Singaporeans want to emigrate: survey. [ONLINE] Available at: https://sg.news.yahoo.com/nearly-1-5-young-singaporeans-want-emigrate-survey-090830259.html. [Accessed 01 November 2018].

Teng, E. and Leong, C.H., 2017. The effect of perceived equity on perceptions of immigrants. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 61, pp.1-6.

The Online Citizen. 2018. IPS releases 2-yr-old survey results endorsing Minister Ong's view 1 week after he said to bring in more FT - The Online Citizen. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2018/09/30/ips-releases-2-yr-old-survey-results-endorsing-minister-ongs-view-1-week-after-he-said-to-bring-in-more-ft/. [Accessed 01 November 2018].

The Online Citizen. 2018. Straits Times report: More young people feel Singapore benefits from presence of foreign talent - The Online Citizen. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2018/09/28/straits-times-report-more-young-people-feel-singapore-benefits-from-presence-of-foreign-talent/. [Accessed 01 November 2018].

The Straits Times. 2018. Emigration survey doesn't capture more complex motivations of young Singaporeans, Letters in Print News & Top Stories - The Straits Times. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/letters-in-print/emigration-survey-doesnt-capture-more-complex-motivations-of-young-sporeans. [Accessed 01 November 2018].

The Straits Times. 2018. How IPS emigration survey was done, what its focus was, Letters in Print News & Top Stories - The Straits Times. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/letters-in-print/how-ips-emigration-survey-was-done-what-its-focus-was. [Accessed 01 November 2018]

The Straits Times. 2018. Who are 'locals' in IPS survey?, Letters in Print News & Top Stories - The Straits Times. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/letters-in-print/who-are-locals-in-ips-survey. [Accessed 01 November 2018].

Walliman, N., 2015. Social research methods: The essentials. Sage.

Ziguras, C. and Gribble, C., 2015. Policy responses to address student “brain drain” an assessment of measures intended to reduce the emigration of Singaporean international students. Journal of studies in International Education, 19(3), pp.246-264.