DYNADE: Dynamics of Development: Understanding Adolescents' Intergroup Attitudes, National Feelings, and Perception of Social Norms

The research aims to understand the interplay between group norms and prejudice and also to study how teenagers perceive their social environments and themselves inside it. The longitudinal study is mapping the development of shared social norms in school classes and their effect on the formation of intergroup attitudes. 60 school classes of approximately 1500 Hungarian teenagers, starting secondary school in the 2016/2017 academic year, are participating in the study. They fill out an anonymous online questionnaire twice (in the first and last six weeks of the academic year). The questionnaire is designed and developed by the researcher through various steps of qualitative conceptualisation and pretesting. The questionnaire is filled out by research participants in the computer labs of secondary schools under the direct supervision of members of the research team, ensuring high quality, reliable data.
The sample represents the heterogeneity of secondary schools in Budapest.

Results of the study will not only be shared with the academic community, but the researcher invites all interested teachers and principals from the participating schools to discuss the results and utilise them for fostering the development of more inclusive school classes. All young participants of the study will also be informed about the findings of the research and the researcher hopes to inspire them by showing how important their views are for their peers.

Research ethics and data protection:
The project has been approved by Central European University's Ethical Research Committee (ref number 2015-2015/6/EXT).
Data collected throughout the project are processed anonymously ensuring that neither the participating individuals nor the the participating schools will be identifiable (all personal identifiers are anonymised by cryptographic hash function). School principals, headmasters and parents are informed about the nature of the study and are asked for consent and cooperation. Students participate voluntarily in the study and are allowed to quit the survey any time in case they chose to do so.

Latest developments:
Data collection in the first wave of the study has been completed by 15 October 2016.
Currently the data is cleaned and prepared for analysis.

Data collection of the second wave of the study has been completed by 12 May 2017.