PROJECT METROPOLITAN

The present study is empirically based on data collected within a long-term research project called Project Metropolitan in Stockholm, Sweden. The project was originally planned as a joint Scandinavian enterprise with cohorts in four Scandinavian capitals, but for various reasons only the Copenhagen and Stockholm sub-projects got off the ground. Here we are concerned with the Stockholm branch only.

The aims of Project Metropolitan

The general questions asked in Project Metropolitan are: in what ways and to what extent the social situations and behaviours of Scandinavian metropolitan adolescents and young adults reflect their social origins, early personal resources and childhood experiences? Thus, the project seeks to describe, in outline, the social positions, compositions and characteristics of the parental families as well as childhood, adolescent and young-adult social situations, abilities, resources and behaviours of young Stockholmers themselves within the substantive areas under consideration. Of the original fields of interest two have come to dominate the project. The first is deviance, and the second is social stratification and social mobility, with special focus on the role of selection to higher education.

Obviously, the project is about differential change and development of the type in which each individual passes through a sequence of phases. All phases have their dependent variables, which are related to dependent variables of earlier phases and to other variables, either changing or constant over time.