I apologise to my readers for the long break in posts! Long story! But here I am back again!

There is a very interesting event going on at the moment. This is the “What Next?” programme hosted by Nigel Latta and John Campbell on TV1. I hope many teachers and classes are watching this programme and taking part. If you aren’t you can alway dip into it in other ways such as TVNZ on demand and the Whats Next website.

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/what-next

One of the interesting things about this program is the New Zealand Values Study is linked into the program:

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/what-next/learn-more/new-zealand-attitudes-and-values-study/

This study has been recording the values and attitudes of NZs every year since 2009 and aims to continue for 20 years. There are 214 questions in this study.

Here an example of one of the questions from the NZAVS:

You might like to try this question with friends, family or in the classroom to see what people in your circles think. At the moment I have not been able to track down the full results of the NZAVS data. Hopefully, I might have more on this by next week.

There is another major study of NZ (and other countries) called the World Values Survey. This project began in 1981 and is continuing. There have been 6 rounds of this survey completed and a 7th round started in January 2017. This survey asks 228 questions about attitudes and values. It is much easier to get data from this study to look at and work with. The New Zealand Results for the 2011 survey is at:

http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV6.jsp

Below are the results for one question:

It is interesting to note that under 29s vote 50 to 31 for the environment over economic growth. By comparison, 50 and overs voted 45 to 37 for economic growth over the environment. Would the young people you know or work with respond in the same manner as the under 29s? Try it out and see!

It will be interesting to see how the Whats Next? programme addresses values.

Next week my post will continue this theme and look in more depth at how values differ across the world based on data from the WVS. I also hope to have more information about how to access NZVAS data.