The Valuegenesis Research: what is it?

The Valuegenesis research begun in 1989 was an important landmark study carried out by the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America. It was without question the largest and most comprehensive study ever made of church youth. The impact of the study set in motion a whole series of events - planned changed conferences, vision-to-action focus groups, new concerns, attitudes, training programs, priorities of the home, school, and church, and publications - that resulted in more effective way to help youth to a life of commitment and loyalty to the Adventist church (For more details please refer to the Hancock Center for Youth and Family of La Sierra University, www.lasierra.edu/centers/hcym/).
In 2001 the EUD and TED Youth Departments and the Jose Figols Centre for Youth Ministry (Collonges) started working on the project of a European Valuegenesis, in consultation with the Hancock Centre for Youth and Family of La Sierra University. The American survey involved young students in USA Adventist Schools; the European survey has chosen a different approach. Given the weak presence of SDA schools in Europe, an equivalent target choice would have not been representative of the overwhelming majority of our young people.
The main challenge was therefore to find a good and effective way to reach Adventist young people at local church level, scattered in 21 European countries. At the beginning of 2004, after the development of a parallel project - the Master in Youth Ministry, launched by the Centre for Youth Ministry in cooperation with the Division Youth Departments and the three European Adventist Universities (Collonges, Newbold and Friedensau) and thanks to new technologies, a new idea re-launched the Valuegenesis project: a web-based survey involving all the Adventist youth aged 15-25.
The data collection has been organised by groups of countries starting their campaign at intervals of 30 days, for 8 months. At the end of this period, the results of each Union are immediately available under the form of graphs presenting the main trends.
This will allow young people, pastors and church administrators to have an immediate knowledge of the main findings. An in-depth report is currently being elaborated by the Valuegenesis Research committee and it will be soon available.

Manuela Casti