Cultural Change in Copenhagen

Until March 31st, 2026. You can participate any time until that date.

Yes, you can complete the questionnaire survey in Danish or in English (the English version was not available right from the start – our sincerest apologies for that).

Yes, we can send you the link by email. Just send us an email (kik@ku.dk) with your full name and, if possible, the date and (rough) time of your participation in the questionnaire survey.

Of course! Just send us an email (kik@ku.dk) with your full name and, if possible, the date and (rough) time of your participation in the questionnaire survey. We will initiate the data deletion process promptly and, if you want us to, we will inform you once your data has been deleted. Please note that your withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of data processing carried out prior to your withdrawal of consent.

Yes, we can reset your responses to the consent questions, allowing you to start over with the questionnaire survey. Just send us an email (kik@ku.dk) with your full name and, if possible, the date and (rough) time of your participation in the questionnaire survey.

Of course! Just send us an email (kik@ku.dk) with your link to the questionnaire survey, which you have received in the invitation we sent you. If you cannot get hold of that link at all or the questionnaire survey is no longer active, we can alternatively try to find you in our contact list by your full name (but this may not work if multiple people on the list share your name). Please note that we cannot prohibit that you will be contacted by the University of Copenhagen for different surveys/studies in the future.  The University of Copenhagen does not maintain a single database where we collect information on potential participants for research projects and, therefore, it is not possible to unsubscribe from such a list.

Based on the (very helpful) feedback of some participants, we have realized that our original description of the questionnaire survey was not as clear as it could have been. For researchers in psychology, the term “cultural change” does not refer to changes in high culture (like the arts, music, theatre, and museums), but to changes in everyday culture – that is, changes in people’s attitudes, feelings, and habits. Unfortunately, we have overlooked that some people outside of psychology do primarily associate the term “cultural change” with the former changes, not the latter. Therefore, we have sought to clarify what we mean with “cultural change” throughout the questionnaire survey. We sincerely apologize for not being clearer right from the start.

People’s perception of how culture has changed can differ quite a bit from how culture has actually changed. Almost all psychological research on cultural change seeks to understand actual change and, thus, examines people’s attitudes, feelings, and habits at more than one point in time to measure directly the actual change/difference between time points. Our project, too, employs this approach.

There are two main reasons for that. First, everyday culture – that is, people’s attitudes, feelings, and habits – can be measured with a single question per attitude, feeling, or habit. Thus, a questionnaire with 10 questions on people’s attitudes, feelings, and habits can measure 10 different indicators of culture. By contrast, the most widely used questionnaires to measure basic personality characteristics require multiple questions to measure a single characteristic (and we use those most widely used questionnaires).

To illustrate, the personality characteristics in our questionnaire survey are typically measured by averaging the responses to 10-16 questions. Second, as described in the participant information attached to the invitation, Statistics Denmark will link the data of our questionnaire survey to different Danish Registers, and data from the Danish Registers will serve as additional indicators of culture. In all, then, the survey will include much more information on everyday culture than on people’s personality characteristics.

These are important and classic questions, and psychologists have conducted countless studies to find answers. The results of these studies show that people indeed behave differently in different situations and in different social roles, but, at the same time, people also show some degree of behavioural consistency across situations and time.

To provide just one brief illustration, Chandler may joke around much more in the pub than in church, but, at the same time, Chandler consistently jokes around somewhat more than other people (both in the pub and in church). Thus, psychologists would describe Chandler as generally humorous; they would say he has a playful personality. Psychologists are aware that situations and social roles play an important role in understanding why a person behaves in a certain way, but personality plays an important role, too, and our questionnaire survey primarily focuses on personality.

If possible, researchers typically seek to use the best established/most widely used questionnaires to measure the things they are interested in. We did so, too. Unfortunately, the arguably best established/most widely used questionnaire to measure the most basic personality characteristics indeed includes some old-fashioned terms: The original questionnaire has been constructed in the 1970s and our (updated) version comes from the late 1980s.

While we certainly agree that it would be desirable to modernize some of the terms in that questionnaire, empirical studies have shown that the questionnaire still measures personality characteristics very accurately. In fact, to directly test how accurate the questionnaire measures personality characteristics in the present questionnaire survey, we included another questionnaire that measures related personality characteristics. Also, researchers typically average the responses to multiple questions from longer questionnaires, so that the undesirable influence of single, old-fashioned terms should get “averaged out.”

Yes, sorry, it is difficult to explain without an example. Fortunately, this document is a good platform to provide an example. In this example, we intentionally use a personality characteristic that does not appear in the questionnaire so that your responses to the questionnaire are not influenced by our example.

So, suppose one pair of attributes was “very funny” (printed on the left side) and “little funny” (printed on the right side). In between the two terms, you would see seven “radio buttons”, numbered from “1” on the far left to “7” on the far right. If you were “very funny,” you would select “1” on the very left – that is, the radio button nearest to “very funny.” If you were “little funny,” you would select “7” on the very right – that is, the radio button nearest to “little funny.” And, if you were neither “very funny” nor “little funny,” but somewhere in-between the two extremes, you would select the appropriate number between “2” and “6” (e.g., selecting “4” indicates that you were right in the middle, neither “very funny” nor “little funny”).

We have invited all people who were (a) registered as residents of Greater Copenhagen in January 2025 and (b) were 18 to 65 years old at that time.

We have your name and your CPR number. That information has been provided to the University of Copenhagen by the Danish Health Data Authority for scientific purposes. The information we have received from the Danish Health Data Authority is stored on a secure server at the University of Copenhagen and in accordance with the university’s privacy policy.

As the University of Copenhagen is a public authority, our legal basis for unique identification is Section 11(1) of the Danish Data Protection Act, which does not require consent. As a public authority, we are also entitled to send our communications via e-Boks, cf. Section 7 of the Executive Order on the Act on Digital Post from Public Authorities. Our distribution of these messages differs from marketing emails, which you must consent to in order to lawfully receive them. The difference is that, with research surveys, we are not seeking to sell goods. Therefore, research surveys are not covered by the “spam rules” in the Marketing Practices Act, and we are therefore not required to obtain consent in order to contact you directly about participating in a research project.

When the University of Copenhagen distributes surveys as part of research, the distribution itself is based on Article 6(1)(e) of the GDPR (performance of a task carried out in the public interest). This means that we may lawfully send them without consent. This applies regardless of whether you may be asked for consent within the survey itself. The distribution of invitations to participate in research projects via e-Boks is thus an option available to all public research institutions, including hospitals, universities, etc.

No, we do not have your email address, but your contact information to contact you via e-Boks/Digital Post (see FAQ #14 for more information on your contact information).

It is the latter: Our scientific research never examines a single individual. So, for example, we never examine whether one specific person adopts a trendy behaviour. Instead, we examine whether personality characteristics (e.g., playfulness) are statistically related to the adoption of trendy behaviour in general (that is, not for a specific person, but for all people or groups of people).