Measuring Ethnic Attitudes of Young People: Methodological Examinations for Cross-National Research

Juha Hämäläinen, Inger Kraav, Anna Bizaeva, Jari Kainulainen

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Measuring Ethnic Attitudes of Young People: Methodological Examinations for Cross-National Research

Juha Hämäläinen, Inger Kraav, Anna Bizaeva, Jari Kainulainen

Medailon autora:

Prof. Juha Hämäläinen, PhD, Dr. h. c. is a professor of Social Work and Head of the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Eastern Finland. His research and teaching interests are especially in following areas: theoretical foundations and history of ideas of social work and social pedagogy, comparative social work, parenthood, family and youth research, particularly in respect of child welfare and social exclusion of young people, and occupational well-being in social professions.

Dr. Inger Kraav is an associate professor emerita of Education at the University of Tartu, Estonia.

Dr. Anna Bizaeva is an associate professor of Psychology at the University of Pskov, Russia.

Dr. Jari Kainulainen is a researcher in Social Policy and Social Work at the University of Eastern Finland.

Abstrakt:

Taking advantage of a comparative study, this paper discusses the concept of ethnic attitudes paying attention especially to the challenges of measuring. The concept of ethnic attitudes proved complex and troublesome to be measured. In a cross-national comparison a big number of lingual nuances must be considered in order to create a valid measurement shared by each individual country. The comparative study, on which this paper is based was about ethnic attitudes of young people on three countries, Estonia, Finland and Russia. The characteristics of the questionnaire used in the study were analysed using Principal Component Analysis. The analysis indicated the key factors of ethnic attitudes. Clarifying the concept by providing information about the basic dimensions of ethnic attitudes, this paper contributes both to research, education and practices of social work with people from different ethnic background.