The Political Analysis Lab (PAL) under CityU’s Department of Public Policy will collaborate with the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD), a European public policy institute, in a research project titled “Values in Crisis—a Crisis of Values?” 

It tries to answer questions of how people’s moral values change during times of crises under the imprint of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is of a global scale, progresses at a rapid speed and severely restricts the daily lives of people. The researchers will also look into the scale and direction of the changes, and whether people’s moral values will revert after this abnormal period is over, or it will leave a lasting impact.

The project is composed of three panel waves of surveys: the first wave is “amid the crisis”, which is to be conducted at the present moment when curfew-like measures are still in effect; the second wave is the “end at sight” stage, which will be taken when public life begins to turn back to normalcy; the third and final wave will investigate the “after recovery” situations in approximately one year past the peak of crisis when the economy has recovered from the expected recession. 

Academic groups from more than 17 countries and regions, including the UK, Germany, the USA, Japan, Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, have committed to carry out the project in their places. A standardised questionnaire will be used to survey the same group of respondents throughout the different stage. The questions cover thematic blocks of crisis perception, moral values, personality traits, and social orientation. 

According to Dr Edmund CHENG, Director of PAL and Associate Professor at the Department of Public Policy, PAL will develop local questionnaires and experiments, conduct a panel survey in Hong Kong, and collaborate with the partners in writing academic papers.