Charting Trends

a - List of trend domains
b - What is a trend?
c - An example

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National profiles of social change published by each national team all have the same format. For a period starting in the 1960s and ending in the 1990s, they consist of 78 trend reports grouped under 17 main topics.

a - List of trend domains

0. Context
 0.1 Demographic Trends
0.2 Macro-economic Trends
0.3 Macro-technological Trends

1. Age Groups
1.1 Youth
1.2 Elders

2. Microsocial
2.1 Self-identification
2.2 Kinship Networks
2.3 Community and Neighborhood Types
2.4 Local Autonomy
2.5 Voluntary Associations
2.6 Sociability Networks

3. Women
3.1 Female Roles
3.2 Childbearing
3.3 Matrimonial Models
3.4 Women's Employment
3.5 Reproductive Technologies and Biotechnologies

4. Labor Market
4.1 Unemployment
4.2 Skills and Occupational Levels
4.3 Types of Employment
4.4 Sectors of the Labor Force
4.5 Computerization of Work

5. Labor and Management
5.1 Work Organization
5.2 Personnel Administration
5.3 Sizes and Types of Enterprises

6. Social Stratification
6.1 Occupational Status
6.2 Social Mobility
6.3 Economic Inequality
6.4 Social Inequality

7. Social Relations
7.l Conflict
7.2 Negotiation
7.3 Norms of Conduct
7.4 Authority
7.5 Public Opinion

8. State and Service Institutions
8.1 Educational System
8.2 Health System
8.3 Welfare System
8.4 The State

9. Mobilizing Institutions
9.1 Labor Unions
9.2 Religious Institutions
9.3 Military Forces
9.4 Political Parties
9.5 Mass Media

10. Institutionalization of Social Forces
10.1 Dispute Settlement
10.2 Institutionalization of Labor Unions
10.3 Social Movements
10.4 Interest Groups

11. Ideologies
11.l Political Differentiation
11.2 Confidence in Institutions
11.3 Economic Orientations
11.4 Radicalism
11.5 Religious Beliefs

12. Household Resources
12.1 Personal and Family Income
12.2 Informal Economy
12.3 Personal and Family Wealth

13. Life style
13.1 Market Goods and Services
13.2 Mass Information
13.3 Personal Health and Beauty Practices
13.4 Time Use
13.5 Daily Mobility
13.6 Household Production
13.7 Forms of Erotic Expression
13.8 Mood-altering Substances

14. Leisure
14.1 Amount and Use of Free Time
14.2 Vacation Patterns
14.3 Athletics and Sports
14.4 Cultural Activities

15. Educational Attainment
15.1 General Education
15.2 Professional Education
15.3 Continuing Education

16. Integration and Marginalization
16.1 Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities
16.2 Crime and Punishment
16.3 Emotional Disorders and Self-Destructive Behavior
16.4 Poverty

17. Attitudes and Values
17.1 Satisfaction
17.2 Perception of Social Problems
17.3 Orientations to the Future
17.4 Values
17.5 National Identity

b - What is a trend?

  • A social indicator corresponds to the most elementary level of apprehension of a change. It corresponds to a statistical series or to the results of successive surveys. It must be formulated in such a way as to be immediately measurable. Sometimes, for reasons of contingency, it may be only partially available. Provisional assumptions have to be maid.
  • There is no a priori means of limiting a list of indicators for a given domain, but it is not necessary to be exhaustive in order to locate a trend. It can be identified as soon as we have found what is common to the partial developments measured by the indicators.
  • Whether we are talking about the evaluation of a structure or of behavior, a trend always indicates a general movement in the social group under study.
  • We formulate a trend only after sufficiently unequivocal, long (about 20 years), and massive changes have taken place.
  • A trend is in fact the result of multiple choices: the choice of domains under study and thus of exogenous domains, the choice of indicators and their congruent parts, but also the choice of middle-range theories which served to delimit the phenomenon on which we seek to make a pronouncement. Having made these choices, it is then necessary, by a process of synthesis, to group together under one heading the various converging empirical developments we have retained. Hence the following definition (Forsé et al., 1993): "A trend is a theoretical diagnosis through which meaning is given to a group of empirical developments described by indicators in one societal domain."
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    c - An Example: 1.1 Youth (in France)

  • Unemployment rate before 25 years is increasing from 5% in the 1960s to more than 20% in the late 1990s.
  • When employed, youth employement status is much more unstable.
  • In 1962, 72% of boys beeing 18 years old had begun to work. There are 25% nowadays.
  • Age at first marriage was about 23 years old for women in the 1960s. It is 28 in 2002.
  • Under 35 years old, there were 67,000 unmarried couple households in 1968. There were about 1,500,000 unmarried couples in 1990 and 2,400,000 in 1998. Most of them are young. The number of unmarried couples is now greater than the number of married couples when women are less than 26 years old or men less than 28 years old.


    • From these indicators and others the trend can be formulated as:

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