By Kelly Samof and Stephen Howes
Students at the University of Papua New Guinea. Photo: Kelly Samof
Opinion - Few public opinion polls are undertaken in PNG, perhaps because of the expense. Students at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) are not representative of the population but are the nation's future elite and leadership.
We carried out a public opinion poll at the UPNG's School of Business and Public Policy in April 2024. A total of 373 students participated in our survey. The survey examined three key areas: student demographics, attachment to national identity and views on PNG's future.
The demographic profile of the surveyed students reveals a predominantly male population, with 61 percent identifying as male and 39 percent as female, which is almost the same split as a similar survey carried out 12 years ago at UPNG. Most of the students are between the ages of 18 and 24 years, as we would expect.
The students hailed from all 22 of PNG's provinces, with some smaller provinces like Milne Bay and Jiwaka represented as well as much larger provinces like Morobe and East New Britain (Figure 1). 69 percent of students identified only one province of origin, 17 percent two provinces and 12 percent three provinces.
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Nearly 77 percent of our surveyed students identified as coming from a two-parent home, while 15 percent of them reported that they were raised by a single parent.
About 80 percent of the students reported having a guardian who had at least completed high school. Compare this to the 2016-2018 PNG Demographic and Health Survey, which found that only 28 percent of individuals in PNG had completed high school. Likewise, 56 percent of students were raised in an urban area (versus 13 percent for the entire population) and 67 percent said their parents had wage-based employment (versus 15 percent for the entire population).
In summary, UPNG students have a much higher socio-economic status than the average citizen, and this may mean they have different views.
The second part of our survey looked at issues of identity to understand students' allegiances to their families, cultural groups and nation, an important topic of research.
When we asked students what group they were most loyal to, the typical student put family first, then village, wantok or province second, and nation third. However, when we asked which entity they felt close or very close to, more said the nation (90 prcent) then either home village (80 percent) or home province (78 percent).
Comparing the 2024 results to the 2012 survey of UPNG students, feelings of attachments to smaller groups such as home villages and provinces have declined, while feelings of attachment to PNG as a nation have, if anything, increased (Figure 2).
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This idea that the nation is becoming more important to students is supported by another comparison to the 2012 survey. The portion of students that said it is better for local groups in PNG to blend into one society instead of maintaining their distinct languages, customs and traditions increased from 29 percent in 2012 to 42 percent in 2024.
On the regional front, when asked about how close they feel to PNG's close neighbours, Australia and China, students felt closer to Australia than to China with 43 percent of them feeling no closeness at all to China. This is consistent with earlier research.
We also asked students what it means to be Papua New Guinean. More students believed that being a Christian (84 percent) was very important to making you truly Papua New Guinean compared to those who selected other significant factors of national identity such as respecting your traditions and customs (76 percent), having PNG citizenship (79 percent) or being born in PNG (74 percent). Clearly PNG's national identity is closely tied to the country's largest religion. When asked about national pride, students overwhelmingly cited PNG's natural beauty and its diverse cultures, languages and traditions.
The final part of the survey investigated the students' views on PNG's direction of travel. Students were in fact overwhelmingly pessimistic. A staggering 80.2 percent said that the country was heading in the wrong direction; 15.2 percent said they didn't know or didn't want to answer the question; and only 4.6 percent said it was going in the right direction.
Perhaps this pessimism is not surprising given the rioting in Port Moresby in January. Nevertheless, the results certainly convey a very negative national mood. This is a standard public opinion question, so international comparisons are possible. If we take only those responses that answered the question, the degree of pessimism in our survey exceeds that observed in the 30 other countries for which data have been compiled (Figure 3).
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While these other surveys are of the entire population rather than of only university students, the comparison is alarming. The primary reasons students gave for their negativity were poor economic management (39 percent), rampant corruption (23 percent) and inadequate leadership (16 percent). Surprisingly, issues related to law and order, while significant, seemed to rank lower.
The strong and increasingly unified sense of national identity is certainly a positive to emerge from this survey. The almost unanimous view that things are heading in the wrong direction should serve as a wake-up call for Papua New Guinea's politicians.
More graphs can be in seen in the authors' 2024 PNG Update survey presentation.
-Disclosure: This research was undertaken with the support of the ANU-UPNG Partnership, an initiative of the PNG-Australia Partnership, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The views are those of the author only.
Kelly Samof is a lecturer in economics at the School of Business and Public Policy, University of Papua New Guinea.
Stephen Howes is Director of the Development Policy Centre and Professor of Economics at the Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University.
-This article was first published by Devpolicy Blog.
