COMENIUS PROJECT “EUROPEAN VALUES EDUCATION”
A CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON BETWEEN DUTCH AND TURKISH STUDENTS
Melek Göregenli[1], Uwe Krause[2], Pelin Karakuş[3], İlkay Südaş[4]
(THE FINAL BRIEF REPORT*)
The main scientific objectives of the present study can be summarized in two basic parts. These objectives are as follows:
Ø A preliminary research for the validation of some subparts in the European Values Study (2008).
Ø To improve the useful educational materials for Geography and Social Psychology education in Turkey and the Netherlands
In accordance with these objectives, field research was conducted in November 2012. The sample consisted of 335 university students from Ege University in Izmir, Turkey (42 males, 110 females and two unreported) and Fontys University Tilburg, The Netherlands (118 males and 63 females).
The method of this study is field/questionnaire research. Participants filled in a comprehensive questionnaire form including several socio-demographic questions (sex, age, place of birth, monthly income etc.). 162 items were asked in the form including the Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ) (Schwartz, et all.,2001), General System Justification (GSJ) Scale (Kay & Jost, 2003) and Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) Scale (Weber & Federico, 2007) and selected questions from the European Values Study (EVS) 2008. Moreover, the questionnaire form also included some open-ended questions in order to provide a better understanding of the opinions of the participants regarding specific topics.
The internal consistencies of the scales and the values indexed by PVQ show that these scales are sufficiently reliable to justify their uses for the pre-validation study of the EVS questions. The intercorrelations between the questions selected from the EVS 2008 study and the social psychological variables showed that the responses to the EVS questions are generally related to the participants mean scores of authoritarianism and general system justification scales. There are several significant relations between these variables in the two samples. For instance there are significant negative correlations between the questions related to politics and GSJ and RWA. Furthermore there are significant positive correlations between the questions related to religion and GSJ and RWA.
Besides, the correlation analysis showed that the direction of some significant correlations are similar in the Turkish and Dutch samples. For instance in the Turkish sample, it shows that all political actions (signing a petition, joining in boycotts, attending lawful demonstrations, joining unofficial strikes, occupying buildings or factories) and political interest are negatively correlated with GSJ and RWA. In the Dutch sample, it shows that only “signing a petition and occupying buildings or factories” are negatively correlated with GSJ. On the other hand, all political behaviours except “signing a petition” are negatively correlated with RWA.
GSJ and RWA are positively correlated with right-wing political views in both samples. The importance of religion in life and being religious are positively correlated with GSJ and RWA in the Turkish sample. However there is no significant relation revealed with GSJ in the Dutch sample. Nevertheless, RWA is positively correlated with the importance of religion in life and being religious in the Dutch sample. Concerning confidence in institutions, it can be seen that there are several strong relations with GSJ and RWA in both samples. Another similarity in the two samples is the correlations related to citizenship. The degrees of feeling honoured by being a Turkish/Dutch citizen are positively correlated with GSJ and RWA in the two samples.
The relations between the attitudes of the two samples towards immigrants and GSJ and RWA showed that positive attitudes towards immigrants are negatively related with GSJ and RWA in the two samples. The relation between the importance of family and these social psychological variables is also similar in the two samples, the higher the mean scores of GSJ and RWA, the higher the importance of family for Turkish and Dutch participants.
The intercorrelations between EVS questions and portrait values generally showed that there are several significant strong correlations between the EVS questions and portrait values especially with “Tradition, Security, Conformity, Universalism, Achievement and Benevolence” in both samples. For instance, “The frequency of discussing political matters and participation in political actions” (signing a petition, joining in boycotts, joining unofficial strikes and occupying buildings or factories) are negatively correlated with “Security, Conformity and Tradition” in the Turkish sample. Among the political actions, it is seen that “joining unofficial strikes” is negatively correlated with “Security, Conformity and Tradition” in the Dutch sample. Furthermore, it is observed that the political view is positively correlated with “Tradition, Security, Conformity” in the Turkish sample and in the Dutch sample it is negatively correlated with “Universalism” and positively correlated with “Achievement”.
“The importance of religion in life” is positively correlated with “Benevolence, Security, Conformity and Tradition” in the Turkish and Dutch samples. Furthermore, “being a religious person” is positively correlated with “Security, Conformity and Tradition” in both samples as well. The importance of family is positively correlated with “Benevolence, Conformity and Tradition” in both samples.
In the Turkish sample, “Satisfaction with democracy in Turkey” is positively correlated with “Security, Conformity and Tradition”. “Thinking democracy is better than any other form of government” is positively correlated with “Universalism, Security and Conformity”. In the Dutch sample, it can be seen that “satisfaction with the democracy in the Netherlands” is positively correlated with “Conformity”.
These significant correlations between the questions related to “religion, political interest and democratic attitudes” in the EVS questions and portrait values are in line with several indications in previous studies in Turkey. Gürşimşek and Göregenli (2005) reported that participants with higher scores on traditionality power and conformity are seen to have higher scores on system justification. Nationalism, which is also closely related with system justification, also correlated with values (Hortaçsu & Cem-Ersoy, 2005; Kuşdil & Şimşek, 2007).
The country-based analysis of EVS questions and other social psychological variables also indicated that there are significant differentitions between the responses of the Turkish and Dutch participants. For example, compared to Turkish participants, Dutch participants scored significantly higher in “political concern; participation to several political actions; satisfaction with democracy in their own country; confidence in the press, Parliament, the political parties, the educational system, the health system, the justice system, the EU and NATO”. On the other hand, Turkish participants, compared with Dutch participants, scored significantly higher in “importance of religion in life; defining oneself as a religious person; the importance of family in life; confidence in the mosque, the armed forces (See also Göregenli, 2005; Krause, 2010; 2012) and environmental organisations”.
Contrary to these results, the comparison of Turkish and Dutch participants GSJ and RWA mean scores revealed that compared to the Dutch sample, Turkish participants scored significantly lower in GSJ and RWA. In addition, donating one’s own money in order to fight environmental pollution and support nature, Turkish participants scored higher than the Dutch participants.
Moreover, the responses of two samples to the item related to “attitudes towards the acculturation strategies of immigrants” showed that Dutch participants scored significantly higher in assimilation ideology as a dominant culture. According to the descriptive results of EVS questions of two samples also showed that compared to Turkish participants, Dutch participants do agree more that competition is good and it stimulates people to work hard and develop new ideas (See the preliminary report of this research; Göregenli, et all., 2012).
According to the results regarding EVS questions, the Turkish participants may be assumed to be more conservative than Dutch participants. In social psychology literature (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski & Sulloway, F. 2003), there are several pieces of evidence which refer to strong positive relations between conservatism, general system justification and right-wing authoritarianism. Contrary to these previous studies, this present study showed that the Dutch participants received higher scores in GSJ and RWA. Furthermore, the Dutch participants do agree more with the assimilation ideology.
The answers to the open-ended questions gave more of an insight into the mind-set of the participants and how some of the questions of the EVS study might be interpreted. The comparison of different measurement types (open-ended/closed-ended) showed differences or similarities in the answers of the participants, depending on the type of measurement. There is a similar finding for the question about family. Family seems to be highly important for both samples. However, what people understand by family is quite different in the Turkish and Dutch cultural settings. When considered that such a difference was detected through the open-ended type question, it can be said that comparing two different cultures only through quantitative methods provides a relatively limited understanding. Thus, it seems to be important to test some quantitative findings with qualitative methods as well (See the preliminary report of this research; Göregenli, et all., 2012).
When asked about cultural adaptation problems between Turkish and Dutch people in the context of the Netherlands the results of this research also indicated that the problems mentioned by both groups do not seem to be based on strict prejudices but are more rational and related to realistic life situations, which is promising in a context of mutual understanding between the younger groups (See the preliminary report of this research; Göregenli, et all., 2012).
The results of this research can be a valuable contribution when using the teaching strategies together with the other resources of the European Values Education project offered on the website (www.atlasofeuropeanvalues.eu). The videos of young people and the different map tools are also valuable as they not only give an insight into the country averages but also to different respondent types.
In conclusion, the present study aimed to provide a preliminary analysis of the relations between the EVS questions and other social psychological variables (General System Justification, Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Portrait Values). The present study can be assumed as one of the few researches, which has a multi-disciplinary approach to the current issue. It also pointed out the importance of values as well as social psychological constructs for cross-cultural and intergroup comparisons. The examination of these relations between values and other social psychological variables needs to be examined on the basis of large samples within a larger cross-cultural context to enhance the dependability of the results. Although the size of the sample is small, this study revealed significant hints between the values and other key variables. A more detailed report is available and results of this research will be published in the next few months.
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