Stability and change of basic personal values in early adolescence: a 2-year longitudinal study

OBJECTIVE: We examined patterns of change and stability in the whole set of ten Schwartz values over two years during early adolescence. METHOD: Participants completed the Portrait Values Questionnaire repeatedly throughout the junior high school years. The study involved six waves of data and a total of 382 respondents aged 10 years at the first measurement occasion (43% female). We investigated multiple types of stability in the values: mean-level, rank-order, and ipsative stability. RESULTS: At the mean-level, self-enhancement and openness to change values increased in importance. Self-direction and hedonism values showed the greatest increase - about one third of a standard deviation. Conservation and self-transcendence values did not change with the exception of tradition, which decreased slightly. After correcting for measurement error, rank-order stability coefficients ranged from .39 (hedonism) to .77 (power). Correlations between value hierarchies measured two years apart were ≥ .85 for 75% of respondents, and ≤ .12 for 5% of the respondents. Thus only a small proportion of participants experienced a marked change in the relative importance they ascribed to the ten values. CONCLUSIONS: Results are discussed and related to earlier findings on patterns and magnitude of value change during other periods of the life span.