Adolescents’ Changing Values in a Changing Society

Abstract

German youth has been a subject of interest as well as concern among political observers and social scientists alike for some time. One of the reasons for this is the assumption, occasionally borne out by facts, that the youth is a forerunner of future developments. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of good data that can be considered representative of German youth. Although there is an abundance of one-shot surveys of German youth conducted by pollsters, their reports do not present much more than the marginal distributions of the answers to the single questions. Thus, their contribution to knowledge about youth is minimal. Other serious methodological problems, like the distortions caused by the use of quota samples for surveys of youth are present. The main problem however, a point to which we will return shortly, is the lack of comparability between different studies.