Basic values are abstract beliefs about desirable, trans-situational goals that serve as guiding principles in people's life. Values have been conceived as enduring beliefs, which are relatively consistent over time. Nonetheless, they may undergo significant modifications across the life span. Most of previous studies on value change have been conducted on samples of adults or university students. Only few studies, in contrast, have focused on earlier developmental stages.
The aim of the present study is to investigate the normative development of values in the transition from middle to late adolescence, during the high school years (i.e., from 15 to 18 years). We adopt Schwartz's (1992) model of basic personal values, due to its comprehensiveness and wide use. We rely on different approaches to longitudinal data, which offer unique information on stability and change. Specifically, we examine: 1) correlation over time for assessing the extent to which individual differences in the importance of values remain constant (rank-order stability); 2) latent growth curve modeling for examining the average change in value importance (mean-level stability); 3) within-person correlations for examining the degree to which the person's value hierarchy is maintained over time (ipsative stability). Moreover, we examine how development and change in the full set of values is related to significant outcomes at end of the high school, among which school engagement and achievement.
The study is part of an ongoing longitudinal research that involve about 300 high school Italian students. Data for the first three time points, separated by 1 year, from 2nd to 4th grades, are already available. We intend to extend the longitudinal study, by adding a new wave of data at the end of the upper secondary school (when students are in the 5th grade), and collecting significant scholastic outcomes, among which school engagement and students' final grades, attendance and conduct.
Some studies have examined normative patterns of change of Schwartz's values in adulthood (e.g., Bardi et al., 2009, study 4; Milfont et al., 2016; Schwartz, 2005; Vecchione et al., 2016) or late adolescence, among university students (e.g., Bardi et al., 2009, study 1 and study 2; Myyry, Juujärvi & Pesso, 2013; Schwartz, 2005). A fewer number of studies, by contrast, have included samples of early (Vecchione, Döring, Marsicano, Alessandri and Bardi, 2016) and middle adolescents (Hofmann-Towfigh, 2007; Bardi et al., 2009, study 1). These studies have used single methods for investigating the process of change, thus providing only a partial perspective on value change.
Other studies were performed using different frameworks for understanding and assessing personal values (Krishnan, 2008; Lubinski, Schmidt & Benbow, 1996). However, these studies employed ipsative measures of values, such as the Study of Values (Allport, Vernon & Lindzey, 1970) and Rokeach's (1973) Value Survey, which have been widely criticized and had fallen into disuse (Braithwaite & Scott, 1991). Moreover, they were focused on selected populations, such as intellectually gifted adolescents, so that one cannot discern whether the observed changes in values reflect normative age-related processes shared by the general population.
To the best of our knowledge, the study we intend to present is the first to adopt multiple analytic approaches for studying the normative development of the whole set of Schwartz's values in the transition from middle to late adolescence, during the high school years (i.e., from 15 to 18 years).
The study examines multiple aspects of stability and change, including stability of adolescents' value hierarchies, an ipsative form of stability that has been neglected in most of previous studies. A defining characteristic of values is that they are hierarchically ordered along a continuum of importance (Rokeach, 1973). Changes in person's hierarchy of values may have significant implications, as individual's perceptions, attitudes, and behavior are oriented by relative rather than absolute levels of importance assigned to values (Bardi & Goodwin, 2011). Although this has long been recognized (Schwartz, 1992, 1996), only two studies (Dobewall & Aavik, 2016; Vecchione et al., 2016), to date, have investigated ipsative stability in basic personal values. These studies, however, have focused on adulthood.
Another major drawback of existing studies (e.g. Bardi et al., 2009; Hofmann-Towfigh, 2007) is the use of a two-wave design, which is limited in its conceptualization of change as the simple difference between measurement occasions, and cannot describe the shape of the developmental trajectory (Singer & Willett, 2003). This is the first study to track the growth trajectories of basic values in adolescence, using a four-wave longitudinal design.
Also, and no less importantly, some of earlier studies (e.g., Hofmann-Towfigh, 2007; Bardi et al., 2009, study 4) used samples of heterogeneous ages. Age and cohort effects may have been confounded in these studies.
This project is novel also in other respects.
First, it is the first study to investigate how change in the full set of values predict academic motivation and achievement at a distance of time, taking into account the stability of the variables. Only few studies, to date, have investigated the relation of values with school success. These studies used cross-sectional data and were focused on a limited number of values (e.g., Fries et al., 2007; Henderson-King & Smith, 2006; Parks & Guay, 2012).
Moreover, differently from previous studies, the present research adopts a refined version of Schwartz's theory, recently proposed by Schwartz and colleagues (2012). This refined theory adopts a more fine-grained conceptualization of values. It distinguishes 19 values, most of which represent subtypes of the 10 values in the original theory (Schwartz, 1992). Recent studies showed that splitting the 10 values into more narrowly defined dimensions can increase the explanatory power of values, and can provide insight into theoretically relevant issues in the research on values (Schwartz et al., 2012; Schwartz, Cieciuch, Vecchione, et al., in press). Importantly, the 19 values are arrayed on the same motivational continuum as in the original theory, and can be combined into the 10 original values (Schwartz et al., 2012), thus allowing to maintain continuity with earlier studies on value change.
ESSENTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bardi, A. & Goodwin, R. (2011). The dual route to value change: Individual processes and cultural moderators. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42, 271-287.
Rokeach, M. (1973). The nature of human values. New York: Free Press.
Schwartz, S.H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 1-65). New York: Academic Press.