This part of the project aims to produce a non Eurocentric perception of the world. To do this, a survey is conducted on undergraduate students of different countries in the world. The questionnaire asks them about their perception of the world and we have to check if in this world representation, something emerges that could be identified as Europe and what place it is allotted to this area. The survey takes place at least in the 11 partner's countries with some extension in other relevant countries. Comparisons is made between the representations of student living inside European Union (France, Belgium, Portugal, Sweden, Malta, Romania), in neighboring countries (Turkey) and in remote countries (China, India, Cameroon, Brazil). The difference between gender perception and academic field of students is also studied.

The WP 2 in progress...

The WP2 mental map of student aims to last 18 month from January 2009 to June 2010.
The main steps in the WP are the following ones:

 ♦♦ The WP2 “mental maps of students” was launched at the very beginning of the project in January 2009. All partner were then gathered in Paris and start to think together to the building of the questionnaire for the survey that raise specific problems due to the fact the survey was planned to be done worldwide.

♦♦ Between January and July 2009, stand the test phase in order to test and validate the questionnaire in each partner’s country [Picture 1] [Picture 2]. The questionnaire have been then translate from English to 9 more different languages (French, Portuguese, Russian, Romanian, Turkish, Azeri, Chinese, Dutch, Hungarian), printed and send mail postal mail to each country. Each partner received also a handbook to help him/her in the organization of the survey.

♦♦ From July 2009 to January 2010, the survey has been completed. 9343 students have been surveyed in 18 countries and 43 cities of the world. In each city 6 academic field have been surveyed (Arts, engineering, health, political science, social science, economy).AAs soon as a set of questionnaires was completed partners enter in the process of coding them and start the data entry in a web application build on purpose for the project. At this stage each partner translated the student’s answers from their own language to English in order to allow a common analysis of the vocabulary used by students when naming world regions or when giving words to describe Europe. Then the partners send back the questionnaire field in Paris.

♦♦ As soon as a set of questionnaires was completed partners enter in the process of coding them and start the data entry in a web application build on purpose for the project. At this stage each partner translated the student’s answers from their own language to English in order to allow a common analysis of the vocabulary used by students when naming world regions or when giving words to describe Europe. Then the partners send back the questionnaire field in Paris.

♦♦ Partners prepared a report on each country analyzing the first part of the questionnaires that was discussed during the June 2010 general meeting in Paris and later improved.

♦♦ The questionnaire where then scanned and maps were extracted in order to be digitalize. More than 270 hours were necessary to digitalize only the Europe Maps. More time was necessary to prepare the database from the maps lines extracted and to build maps series for each country. Most of Europe maps series were available in fall 2010.

♦♦ Digitalization of world maps was more complicated and longest. A team of students were raised to digitalize the world maps and in December 2010 the process were still going on but close to the end.

♦♦ The second part of the country reports are under preparation in December 2010.

→ For more information: coordinator at eurobroadmap.eu.