UNDER 18 - The perception of demographic change among young Italians: the research of IRPPS- CNR

Abstract

From 2001 to 2007 the Irpps realized the UNDER-18 project in the framework of the surveys on opinions and attitudes toward demographic change of the Institute. UNDER-18 was carried out in collaboration with local authorities of Venice, Salerno, Lucca e Milano. The paper presents a comparative summary of the results achieved through the qualitative and quantitative surveys in the four cities. The methodology includes qualitative and quantitative tools. The qualitative surveys comprises interviews with local stakeholders (teachers, civil servants, parents) and focus groups (with students, social operators, teachers); the quantitative surveys are realized in selected schools by the administration of a questionnaire addressed to a sample of students in each city. The survey on the students was aimed to assess the effectiveness of the knowledge achieved at school in the field of population, demographic trends, including immigration at the local level. Moreover the questionnaire was designed to collect the opinions of the students toward family roles, women's participation in the labour market, the perception of migration, the possible prejudices on immigrants, gender roles and gender stereotypes. The target of the survey are the students attending the last two years of the high school and the last one of the secondary school. The questionnaire is structured in 4 sections: knowledge of current demographic trends, changes in living arrangements, social integration and citizenship of migrants, gender roles. In the paper are also presented the results of the lexical analysis of the text regarding the interviews to the stakeholders, including a lexical correspondence analysis.