Foreward
Sevil Yesiloglu
Joyce Costello
Abstract
The purpose of this editorial is to introduce the Special Issue “Changing Valuesand its impact on European attitudes and behaviour: A special issue looking atthe European Social Survey Data†and provide an overview of its rationale andmain objectives. After outlining the main themes covered in the eight paper, key contributions are covered.The European Social Survey (ESS) has been collecting data about attitude, beliefs and habits of Europeans since 2001. Data collection in the eight round (2016) included 23 countries and the ninth round (2018) is expected to be released in summer 2019 with 30 countries participating. This panel data allows endless opportunities for exploring how views are similar or different across countries and across time. This also means that the insights for understanding society and deciding what types of policies can be undertaken to improve society.One of the areas that ESS explores across numerous countries over time isSchmidt’s (1992) Human Values scale. These scales look at 10 distinctivelydifferent values which have been used to show how the common values result in similar behaviour across cultures. Davidov et al. (2008) explored the validity of the Human Values scale amongst 20 countries who participate in the ESS surveys. They found that the metric invariance was indeed valid for seven of the motivates and argued the benefits of incorporating the scale into models exploring how attitudes impact behaviour.The papers in this edition address human values and their impact on different issues and behaviours, focusing on climate change (Lapacz, Miladinova and Yesiloglu, 2019); voting behaviour (Schmidt, Brown and Costello, 2019) feelings towards climate change (Georghiou, Shutt and Costello, 2019); civic engagement (Hayball, Waskiw and Costello, 2019); wellbeing (Wedja, Abdoh, Eghweree and Yesiloglu, 2019) and media consumption (Bottrill, Horsely and Armon, 2019). All papers present ideas and conceptual frameworks which could be empirically tested for their explanation of how the common values result in similar behaviour across cultures.Importantly this edition has been drawn together building on the work of a team of Data Driven Marketing students. We would like to thank each and everyone for their contribution: Anna Lapacz, Yana Miladinova, Georghiou and Shutt, Charlotte Cranny-Evans and Klaudia Urbańska, Lucy Hayball, Weronika Waskiw, Rachel Bottrill, Danni Horsley, Millie Schmidt, Mary Brown, Enja Wedja, Mary Aboh and Nyerho Eghweree.
