In this page we present the history of Romanian group for studying social values. This is related to the chronology of data collecting of the Romanian versions of the values surveys, starting with 1993.
In the 1990 wave of the EVS/WVS, Romania collected data three years later than the rest of the European countries, in 1993. The survey was conducted by the the Research Institute for the Quality of Life, under Ioan Mărginean’s coordination, while Marian Preda assured the coordination of the network of field operators.
In the 1995-1997 wave of the WVS, because of some communication deficiencies, Romania is practically absent. A mixed team from the University in Bucharest and the Research Institute for Quality of Life under Dumitru Sandu’s coordination received a CNCSIS (National University Research Council) grant, collecting data in November 1997 according to a very different questionnaire from the WVS questionnaire; as a consequence, the data base has never been integrated with the others. At that time, Mălina Voicu was also part of the team. At the same time, she was the coordinator of the fieldwork and data collecting activities and she also participated in designing the questionnaire together with Dumitru Sandu, Lucian Pop and Mihai Surdu. Among the authors of the current volume, Paula Tufiş and Bogdan Voicu collaborated during the different stages of the data collecting process. In 1998, the IndependentCenter for Social Studies, coordinated by Pavel Câmpeanu, also collected some data according to the WVS questionnaire. However, the quality of the respective data is very difficult to control (Sandu, 2003:42).
In November 1999, a team from the Research Institute for the Quality of Life, coordinated by Cătălin Zamfir, Mălina Voicu and Lucian Pop led the data collecting, and the subsequent analysis of the Romanian version of the 1999-2002 wave of the EVS. The team included Bogdan Voicu, Paula Tufiş, Claudiu Tufiş, Cosmina Rughiniş, Ruxandra Noica, Elena Gheorghiu and Monica Şerban, at that time all being affiliated to ICCV. A failed attempt of put together a volume in which all the results would be presented, eventually materialized through a series of articles that appeared in the 2001 and 2002 issues of the Romanian Sociology journal.
The Romanian team for the study of values, developed mainly inside the Research Institute for Quality of Life, acquires consistency and a sort of stability during 1999-2005. The group’s website certifies the members’ activity. Since 2005, Mălina Voicu has been a member of the Executive Board of the EVS.
In 2005, data for WVS 2005-2007 are collected, with Bogdan Voicu and Mălina Voicu as Romania’s principal investigators. The Research Institute for the Quality of Life (RIQL) assured an institutional support, but the data collecting process was realized with the institutional, logistic and financial aid coming of the Open Society Foundation (OSF) through the program provided by the Public Opinion Barometer (BOP), coordinated by Ovidiu Voicu and assisted by Mihaela Ştefănescu. The Romanian team, including the authors of the current volume, would discuss and finalize the questionnaire variant applied together with BOP members and OSF representatives (Dumitru Sandu, Gabriel Bădescu, Manuela Stănculescu, Cosima Rughiniş, Ovidiu Voicu, Mihaela Ştefănescu). Thus, it resulted in the inclusion of the Romanian variant of the WVS 2005-2007 in BOP-FSD wave from November, 2005, in the first data collecting of this type realized without external financing. The OSF contribution was determinant from a financial point of view, but particularly due to the members of the board of the BOP-FSD and of the coordinator of the program, Mr. Ovidiu Voicu, all of them being active in the critical analysis and the polishing of the Romanian version of the WVS 2005 questionnaire. The Gallup Organization Romania was the data collecting agency for the respective 2005 wave.
2008: A new wave of European Values Survey is currently taking place. The team, hosted by RIQL and led by Mălina Voicu, includes all the authors of this volume, to which adds Marian Vasile. Data collection is scheduled for April-May 2008, and the results will start to be presented to the public in the autumn of 2008. Monica Serban rejoined the team, contributing to a special sub-project involving surveying the social values of the Romanian migrants abroad.
