The Nineties Report

Portrait of graduating girlThe purpose of the Nineties Report is to increase our knowledge and understanding of cultures, values and belief systems among young people of Sweden in the 1990's. The approach is based on participatory research. It all started with a group of young people taking part in an experimental education called "Building the Future", in which they studied the methods and theories of futures studies. On the 1 1/2-year fulltime course some of the participants (born between 1969 and 1974) continued to an additional course in qualitative analysis.

Research design
The core consists of a panel study with yearly in-depth face-to-face interviews lasting 1-3 hours with young people aged 19-25, a random sample, representative of the country as a whole, adjusted for sex, family background, parental status, employment situation, education, work and ethnic distribution. The data was then processed and analyzed with the participation of the interviewees themselves throughout the interpretation process. To secure the validity and reliability of the in-depth interviews regular surveys were performed with parallel samples (see research design).

In addition, video-recorded group discussions took place with young people to check the relevance of the questions. Lastly several films and multimedia presentations were produced within the framework of the project.

Particular importance was attached to future orientations; what makes young people tick, their dreams and lifestyles, including their views on the family, technology, culture, mobility and environmental issues.

How GG is connected to the Nineties Report
The panel study of young people's values and belief systems - the Nineties Report - formally ended as as the name indicates with the decade it mirrored. The panel is aging, once starting as 19-25 years of age they're now getting to their thirties. A new panel with young people being 19-25 at the millennium shift were started now named the "Global Generation".

But wouldn't it be a waste not trying to study how the life cycle influence when young people mature; starting families, finish education and beginning to pay mortgages? Yes definitely and that's why we decided to continue the panel as long as the respondents accept our tricky questionnaires. Still, after so many years, we only have 6-7 percent as internal dropout rate. The explanation is probably that this is a true participatory research project, young people conduct all the interviews and they are likewise active in the analysis work and the different modes of presentations of the results.

Worldwide intergenerational analysis
Another valuable tool in the analysis is the World Value Survey which makes it possible not just to compare values between some sixty countries worldwide but also to compare changes between three different cohorts (from 1986/87 and 1995/96 and 1999/2000) and between all ages from 16 to 75 within these cohorts and countries.

 

 

©2003 Bi Puranen