A Sociological Study on Norm Consciousness

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The main objective of this research project is to elucidate the process of change of norms in postwar Japanese society. In 2000, the first year of this research project, we carried out social research with a qustionnaire in order to investigate life style, norm consciousness and value orientation in Japanese people. In this social research, we paid attention to the three core norms in Japanese society ; (1)gender norms, (2)seniority norms, (3)norms about medical care(especially people's attitude to informed consent).In 2001, the second year of this research project, we did various statistical analyses of collected data. In this analyzing process of collected data, the principal methods we adopted are multiregreession analysis and logisitic regression analysis. As a result, we acquired the following four findings. (1)With regard to gender norms, we found increasing tendency of a negative view about sexual division of labor. Nevertheless, at the same time we found the mechanism which hinders men from doing houseworks. (2)With regard to seniority norms, on the consciousness level, most people are inclined to prfer merit system(in order words, achievement principle) to seniority system. But, in fact, in workplaces both merit system and seniority system are adopted. (3)With regard to norms about medical care, we found a gap between medical professionals and non medical professionals. Furthermore, we also found a difference of opinion between medical doctors and nurses. (4)Through three findings, we concluded that norm consciousness of Japanese people has slowly changed.