Research project: How have values and norms changed over the years?

Fabien Oram

Values and Norms

I interviewed two different people, one woman aged 65 and a boy aged 16, my aim was to find out some of the social differences between the two. How values and norms have changed over the years.

The questions were made upon things that have changed over the years such as how the topic “sex” is dealt with. With this type of questions it makes it easier to identify how a person raised in different ages one with sex being a taboo topic and one without, you can see how norms and values change.

My interviews were structured but I did alter it slightly to adapt to the answer given, I made it structured to make it a bit more valid as the same basis of questions would be asked. The interview lasted about 10 minutes each and I asked a serious of questions and questioned the answers they made.

What I found out

The opinion between the two subjects is generally different but they do have some similarities.

This is a preview of the whole essay

What I found out

The opinion between the two subjects is generally different but they do have some similarities.

The 16 year old male attitude seems to be more lazy, it’s as if he knows how it should be, but knows it wont be made that way, he takes things as they come and generally goes with the flow of change, much more adaptable to situations, although he has a lot of strong views about things being like they were back in the older days not of his generation when things were a bit more strict, especially in schools, whereas the 65 year old female believe that it should not be brought back, but she would not know much about the inside of school systems as she probably wouldn’t have been in one in a while. The women has a more happy feel on society, she doesn’t see it as all too bad, whereas the boy says it could be improved, the boy is a lot more critical than the women. This could be the shaping of the generation. The boy seems to be more detached from his parents than the women, the women believes in strong communication between families, they should go on holidays together, but the boy doesn’t believe so, this leads me to believe that the new generation of people have less need for authority above them (parents) and don’t generally rely on family.

The main thing I notice is that the women still seems to see society in the way she used to know it, she still believes in things like consensus between everyone and sort of a nice happy environment. The boy see’s a more realistic view, probably because he is more involved in society today, he does take a very relaxed attitude and see’s society as a growing problem needed to be solved.

Evaluation

I encountered a few problems with my research, there was always the problem that the women could have developed with society and thus she would change her opinion from what it was when she was much younger, so it’s not truly valid of how it could have been. Also questions were more directed towards the male, as there isn’t much he’d know about the old ways, whereas she would know about the new, but altogether it was a good method. I tried to avoid bias questions as much a possible and leading ones.