Finanziamento UE – NextGenerationEU PRIN 2022 Prin 2022 "START Surfing Transition to Adulthood: Resources and Timing" PNRR M4C2 investimento 1.1 Avviso 104/2022

The START project aims to explore individual differences in Italian adolescents' implicit theories of the life course (conception of adulthood, expected timing and planning of home leaving and parenthood) by combining the life course approach with the literature on value change and cultural beliefs’ formation. It aims to investigate to what extent individual values and intergenerational/intercultural discordance or conflict on values influence adolescents' implicit theories about the life course and their plans for the future. Drawing on the literature, the START project considers value orientations in the following fields: gender and family values; religious and ethno-national values; socio-political values. While analysing the role of values, it takes into account three important factors of social stratification and cultural differentiation: ethnic origin (natives vs migratory background), social class and gender. Moreover, within a multi-level analysis, it pays specific attention to the interplay between individual values and structural constraints/opportunities at local level. A school-based sampling will be implemented to conduct a survey of teenagers, their parents and teachers. The sampling design will adopt criteria typically used in similar research at the national (e.g., ISTAT 2016) and international levels (e.g., CILS4EU project). Overall, the study will cover about 80 secondary schools/160 classes and up to 3,400 students. A final sample of at least 1000 parents and 1000 teachers is expected. As regard the questionnaire, many questions will come from European Values Study (EVS Italy 2017), European Social Survey (ESS round 9, module “Timing of Life” collected in Italy in 2018), and International Social Survey Programme (ISSP, modules “Family and changing gender roles V” and “National identity and citizenship” , which will be collected in Italy in late 2022). This allows the triangulation of results of START’s students, parents and teachers surveys with the most recent data describing Italian and European populations aged 18 and over. In addition, to investigate young people’s social norms and behavioural intentions, the questionnaire will also include so-called “vignettes” (i.e., fictitious but realistic descriptions of scenarios in which certain items are made to vary randomly among the interviewees in order to estimate their causal effect on the responses). The research design enables the integration of several sources of contextual data with individual ones. First, class/school-level information will be obtained by aggregating data collected at the individual level (classmates and teachers). Second, a questionnaire will be administered to the principals of each school to provide additional school-level information. Finally, socio-economic characteristics of the municipality where the school is located/individual lives (based on official statistics) will be linked to individual questionnaires.