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The actual survey results seem more interesting: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/11/18/what-makes-lif...

For instance it highlights the finding that 62% of South Koreans and 58% of Japanese respondents provided only one source of meaning in life vs only 1% of Spanish respondents and then goes on to clarify how that skews the results:

> These differences help explain why the share giving a particular answer in certain publics may appear much lower than others, even if the topic is the top mentioned source of meaning for that given public. To give a specific example, 19% of South Koreans mention material well-being while 42% say the same in Spain, but the topic is ranked first in South Korea and second in Spain. Given this, researchers have chosen to highlight not only the share of the public who mention a given topic but also its relative ranking among the topics coded, both in the text and in graphics.




This might be a direct consequence of language; in Spanish, when you ask questions like this you are normally specifying whether you expect a single or multiple answers by default (akin to "what thing(s) make life meaningful", noting that you can ask with or without the "s" but that is a choice). In Japanese, singular and plural are not distinct except in very particular situations, and IIRC the singular is normally the default unless context makes you think it's plural, so I expect this to contribute greatly (akin to "which makes life meaningful?"). I don't know Korean to comment on that though.


That Koreans and Japanese only choose one answer would suggest to me a poorly worded form that made most of them think they were only supposed to choose one.




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