December 18, 2006
Helve, Helena
Director of the BeSS Project
The Socialisation of Values and World Views. This research will be based on five different data sets which have been gathered using questionnaires, projective picture tests, word association and sentence completion tests, individual and group focused interviews from the same young people and their parents in the suburb of Helsinki in 1976 (N=125), 1982, 1985, 1992 and 1997 (N=46). Many of those young people studied earlier have married and they have children of their own of the same age as their parents were in 1976 when the study started. In the year 2004 new data will be gathered about the socialisation of values and world views from grandparents (first generation), their children (second generation) and their grandchildren (third generation) using the same methods so that comparison across the phases of the study is possible. The study is linked via the research questions and themes with the World Values Surveys (WVS), which have measured the values and beliefs of people on all continents. The follow-up study will focus on how young people in a changing social and cultural context are building different forms of social networks and how they are developing trust and reciprocity on this basis. The study will analyse the family relationships and social networks of young people and how these enable them to increase their social capital. The follow-up study makes it possible also to investigate how young people form cohesive social and moral norms of trust and co-operation. The key words are values, worldviews, socialisation and social capital.