Adolescents’ and Parents’ Perceptions About Core Values to Individual and Family Life: A Cross- Sectional Study Involving Seven European Countries

Abstract

Family, community and school are privileged contexts to acquire and consolidate fundamental values for governing individual life and interpersonal relations across lifespan, and such learning is more effective if there is congruence in the messages learned, and if children and adolescents are stimulated to develop critical thinking competences to deal with information. Involving a convenience sample of 889 subjects, 446 adolescents and 443 parents from seven European countries to whom a selfadministered questionnaire was applied, this paper presents the main results European Journal of Educational Sciences, EJESDecember 2016 edition Vol.3, No.4 ISSN 1857-6036 28 of cross-comparisons between and within countries about the perceived importance of values for family. Participants were also asked to do a selfevaluation of themselves as models of citizenship for others. Overall, mothers tend to consider that values are more promoted in families than fathers, but there are no differences in the opinions of adolescent boys and girls. When males and females are compared with no distinction of generations, the latter agreed more with the significance of values for the family than the former. There are some specific differences between and within countries and sample groups in the evaluation of values and selfperceptions of citizenship performance. Despite the limited number of participants in each country, the discussion of results highlights the importance of debating the values that guide personal and societal principles inside and outside the family, in an effort to construct a world free of prejudice and discrimination and where every person, regardless of cultural, religious or ethnical identities, is invited to contribute to the common wellbeing.