Ideology and Value in the Thinking of Pensioners in Budapest

Our research project focuses on pensioners who are usually out of scope of political psychological researches. The present paper is a pilot study for this project, the aim of which is to get a better understanding about the elderly's thinking and opinion formation regarding societal, political and ideological issues. Literature on the investigation of ageing from the societal engagement point of view was surveyed, bearing in mind also the infl uencing role of the special socio-historical context. Paper-and-pencil-based data collection in groups was performed in 2011 and 2012. One hundred ninety-five subjects from Budapest between the age of 60 and 86 participated in this study. It can be concluded that there are issues, which are important to political actors and to public opinion but not to pensioners. Revealing pensioners' political thinking dimensions and ideological positions can bring us closer to ask them relevantly about their views as well as to understand their opinion about politically important issues. [web URL: http://www.poltudszemle.hu/szamok/2015_1szam/abstracts.pdf]