Advisory Council for Youth Affairs (Nuora), nowadays called the State Youth Council, started to produce Youth Surveys in 1994. This survey series charts attitudes and expectations of Finnish young people aged 15 - 29. Each survey contains both current questions and recurring questions which are repeated over time, enabling the study of long-term attitude changes. The main themes include attitudes to education, working life, social security, spending, drug use, and young people's willingness to participate in order to influence decision-making.
The main themes of the survey were young people's trust in institutions, political participation and attitudes towards various aspects of Finnish society.
Trust in institutions was charted by asking to what extent the respondents trust political parties, public officials, trade unions, the Church, the armed forces, the police, Parliament, municipal council, the EU, the President, banks, big companies and the legal system. Willingness to participate (in a demonstration, strike, boycott, violence against political decision-making, squatting, signing petition etc) for an important cause was surveyed. Further questions asked to what extent the respondents accepted the activities of particular groups (squatters, motor cycle gangs, animal rights activists, skinheads, graffiti makers, the new Nazis) and to what extent they agreed with a number of statements relating to moral values. The statements pertained, for instance, to acceptability of buying stole property, selling drugs, moonlighting, benefit fraud, truancy.
One topic covered the respondents' membership and participation in different types of voluntary or civic organisations such as political parties, sports clubs, environmental organisations, trade unions etc. Views were probed on how important the decisions made by different bodies (e.g. municipal council, Parliament, trade unions, the EU, banks, educational institutions) were to their own life.
The respondents were asked to what extent they agreed with a number of statements relating to, for instance, racism, democracy, unemployment, number of refugees, Finland's EU membership, social security benefits, and social inequality in Finland. One theme pertained to how important the respondents considered it to be that Finland promoted certain issues in the EU (e.g. peace, employment, equality between men and women, Nordic welfare society, crime prevention, human rights, relations with Russia).
Views were probed on what should the most important issue for Finnish decision-makers at that moment and how much influence the respondents thought certain bodies would have on the state of affairs in the future (e.g. the Church, political parties, Amnesty International, Red Cross, environmental organisations, trade unions). Voting intentions were charted by asking whether the respondents intended to vote in the upcoming municipal and European Parliament elections.
Background variables included the respondent's age, gender, basic and vocational education, economic activity, type of municipality and the parents' vocational education.
Finnish Youth Survey Autumn 1996 was conducted in connection with the Labour Force Survey carried out by Statistics Finland. The sample of the Labour Force Survey is drawn twice a year as a stratified random sample from the Statistics Finland population database, which is based on the central population register. Labour Force Survey is a panel study in which one person is interviewed five times. The interviews are conducted every three months apart from the fourth interview, which is conducted six months after the third interview. The first and last interviews are 15 months apart. The sample in each month consists approximately of 12,000 persons, which is, on average, every 300th person from the population. The sample consists of five rotation groups which have joined the survey in different months. The sample for the Finnish Youth Survey Autumn 1996 consisted of 1682 Finnish-speaking young people aged under 30 from several rotation groups. Altogether 1432 young people were interviewed. Non-response was 14% (241 persons), and the main source of non-response was failure to contact the potential participant. The duration of each interview was approximately 16 minutes and 96% of the interviews were made over the phone.