DESCRIBING HARD TIMES - A CROSS-CULTURAL-ANALYSIS OF NEGATIVE VALUES

For about three years a group of us in several European countries have been exploring the aspirations of young people, in part through the s tudy of their values. In this report, we look to the idea of investiga ting values not just in terms of positive choices but also in terms of deprivation. The basic structure of the study was concerned with the contrasting of traditional discrimination (value preference rankings) with two ''deprivation'' conditions. Specifically: a) Standard Adminis tration - Revised Rokeach Values ranked by acceptability b) Loss Forma t - Revised Rokeach Values ranked in terms of the acceptability of the ir loss c) Negation Format - Antonymic Revised Rokeach Values ranked f or acceptability. Unusually for such work, the study combined two ways of looking at the data: not only by mainstream R methodology (e.g., l ooking at average rankings and correlations across conditions) but als o by Q methodology (pattern analysis). Several substantive findings ar e emergent from this study: The R methodological analyses suggest that conditions of 'loss' and of 'negation' are best seen as challenging v ariants of assessing values rather than totally new demands. Some valu es are particularly sensitive to conditions and this suggests that usi ng more than one condition adds to the information gathered.The Q meth odological pursuit of alternative value configurations reveals much th at is hidden by simple averaged ranks by correlation across conditions . The Instrumental value configurations would suggest that 'socio-emot ional' patterns are more salient than traditional 'task' (e.g. achieve ment) patterns amongst young people. This may reflect uncertainty over how (or even if) instrumentality leads to material success. The Termi nal value configurations appear to reflect three main extrapolations i nto the future. One of these is 'spiritual/religious', a second is 'he donic', the third expresses sedimented, 'modern' projected values.