Being yourself and developing yourself in Flanders: a socio-cultural analysis

Over the past ten years, the research group of sociology has developped an aknowledged research-experence concerning the topic of 'individualism'. One of the mst remarkable findings is the popularity of the discours of self-actualisation is referred to as 'a new culture with profounde implications for contemporary culture and society'. But perhaps even more remarkable, is the complexity of meanings and interpretations which are associated wth the discours of self-actualisation. Therefore we want to explore the different contents and meanings Flemisch people give to concepts like 'self-actualisation' and 'being yourself'. Due to the complexity of the meanings, a qualitative analysis is indicated. Therefore we want to analyse essays about self-actualisation, written by Flemisch youth. The Atlas-ti software will be used to support the kind of content analysis we envision. In a second fase, we will use our findings from the qualitative research to develop scales, able to measure the different meanings of 'being yourself and actualising yourself in large scale surveys.