79centredness and openness to alternative family forms – as normative factors.
The procedure carried out to compute these two indicators will be
described in the next section.
Table 3.4 shows the distribution of the shaping factors in the three
countries. The three national samples are quite balanced regarding birth-
cohort membership, with 50% belonging to the older cohort and the
other half belonging to the younger cohort. Regarding gender, the
Portuguese sample shows a slight overrepresentation of women (60%);
while the other two are more gender-balanced. Concerning education,^5
as mentioned in Chap. 2 , in the Portuguese sample there is an overrepre-
sentation of individuals with lower levels of education, with 34.8% hav-
ing attained primary education or less. By contrast, the percentage of
individuals with less than a primary-school education are almost absent
in the Lithuania sample and quite small in Switzerland (5.1%). In
Switzerland, we observe an overrepresentation of individuals with the
medium level of education (75.2%) compared to 48.4% in Portugal and
21.2% in Lithuania. Lithuania stands out as the country with the highest
level of education with 78.6% of the individuals having attained a uni-
versity degree. By comparison, 16.8% of Portuguese respondents and
19.7% of Swiss respondents have a university degree. Therefore, the edu-
cational backgrounds differ quite sharply across countries.
Besides the country and structural levels, we also found it relevant to
include proxy indicators of individuals’ attitudinal profiles, as the norma-
tive contexts associated with the three countries are quite distinct (Chap.
2 ). Based on the scale of attitudes towards family and gender roles, we
built two attitudinal indexes. We ran a principal component analysis in
Table 3.4 Distribution of shaping factors across countries (percentage)
Portugal SwitzerlandLithuania Total χ^2
Birth-cohort 1950–1955 49.3 52.7 50.0 50.5
1970–1975 50.7 47.3 50.0 49.5 2.20n.s.
Gender Male 39.8 49.2 46.4 44.7
Female 60.2 50.8 53.6 55.3 18.10
Education Low 34.8 5.1 0.2 14.4
Medium 48.4 75.2 21.2 46.2
High 16.8 19.7 78.6 39.4 1374.50
Note: p < 0.05; p < 0.01; p < 0.001
A First Portrait of Personal Networks in a Comparative...