The effects of anti-corruption videos on attitudes toward corruption in a Ukrainian online survey

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the outcomes of an anti-corruption educational intervention among Ukrainian students based on an online experiment. More than 3,000 survey participants were randomly assigned to one of three different videos on corruption and its consequences (treatment groups) or a video on higher education (control group). The data suggest a high level of academic dishonesty and misconduct among young people, but also a negative attitude toward corruption in general, highlighting the ambivalence of corruption in the country. We find that one video, which presented a thrilling story abut a victim of corruption related to common bribery in an accessible way, was effective in promoting awareness of the negative consequences of corruption. In contrast, the other two treatment videos, which more closely followed the style of TV news or documentaries on corruption, did not generally promote negative attitudes toward corruption. Presenting corruption issues in a catchy way therefore appears to matter for the effectiveness of such interventions.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-corruption campaigns
• experiments
• corruption
• academic integrity
• university
• students
• Ukraine

Acknowledgments

This study was conducted with financial support provided by the Center for Governance and Culture in Europe at the University of St.Gallen (HSG), Switzerland. The sponsor influenced neither the research design nor the interpretation of the results.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Mass-population surveys in Ukraine regularly conducted within the context of the “Region, Nation and Beyond. An Interdisciplinary and Transcultural Reconceptualization of Ukraine” project on behalf of the University of St. Gallen (HSG), Switzerland (see the project description and survey methodology here: http://www.uaregio.org/en/about/stage-1/).

2. “Ten Faces of Corruption”, a cartoon series developed by Transparency International Russia as part of the educational project “The Alphabet of a Corruption Fighter”.

3. According to Ukrainian government statistics (http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/), there were 657 higher education institutions in Ukraine at the time of the survey.

4. Given the fact that Ukrainian is the official language of instruction in all higher education institutions in Ukraine, and that a significant portion of respondents are from Western Ukraine, where only 1% of the young population speaks Russian at home (cf. Radio Svobody 2019), the percentage of respondents who chose Ukrainian for the survey seems reasonable.

5. The rights holder (315film) granted us permission for the noncommercial use of the video.

6. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6jejFxVSMf0TE1jdURfVldyVTg .

7. At the time of shooting video 2 (mid-to-late 2016), there were already visible signs of progress in fighting corruption in Ukraine that included (i) the introduction of a transparent government electronic procurement system, ProZorro, which saved billions of hryvnas from the budget, (ii) the reformation and introduction of corporate governance in main state enterprises, including Naftogaz, the biggest state enterprise, which made it profitable (iii) the introduction of electronic declarations for state servants, (iv) the introduction of anti-corruption agencies, (v) “new patrol police”, etc. As pointed out in the policy report prepared by Andrii Marusov (2016), the Head of the Board of Transparency International Ukraine, “During 2014–2016 Ukraine has greatly progressed in its fight against corruption: a new institutional framework was established and anticorruption instruments were launched.”

8. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6jejFxVSMf0UWNWYmNtUFB6RkU.

9. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6jejFxVSMf0YVdhdmpQa2ptZUE .

10. We find that experiences with corruption and fraudulent behavior in secondary school and during the university entrance process importantly predict the own cheating practices in university in the control group (video 4): Conditional on various student characteristics (gender, language, region, field of studies, public/private funding, fulltime or not, grades, time spent for preparation, participation in the external independent evaluation, and the reasons for studying), such experiences statistically significantly predict (at the 5% level) 87,5% of own practices, according to joint F-tests for all experience variables. Such experiences to a lesser extent also predict attitudes to corruption, see the outcome variables in Table 7. In this case, 30% of the F-tests are significant at the 5% level.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Center for Governance and Culture in Europe at the University of St.Gallen (GCE-HSG), Switzerland.