 My name is Carol Lee and I'm currently a master's student working with the NZAVS team and today I'll be talking about one of my research topics which is looking at New Zealanders attitudes towards youth and age The legalization of euthanasia has been a really controversial topic in many countries including New Zealand So some people suggest that people should be given the right to make decisions regarding their own death while others argue that euthanasia is no different to murder or that it has high potential for abuse So there has been a lot of diversity and people's opinion towards this issue So what we were really interested in doing in the NZAVS was looking at New Zealanders attitudes towards this issue So what we did was we included an item in our time six wave of our survey for 2014 and 15 I'm looking at people's attitudes towards euthanasia and we used a measure from the British social survey which was suppose a person has a painful incurable disease Do you think that a doctor should be allowed by law to end this patient's life upon their request? So we measured people's attitudes on a rating scale of one to seven where one indicated that they were definitely not supportive of euthanasia four was neutral or unsure and seven was strongly support and we categorized that these rating scales into three groups to gain percentages for those who are pro and those who are neutral and those who are anti euthanasia Ratings of one to two were considered as anti euthanasia, ratings of three to five were considered as being neutral or unsure whereas ratings of six to seven were considered as pro euthanasia We have a sample size of over 15,000 New Zealanders and I think we're really lucky that we have this because this is a real representative sample of New Zealanders so it's likely to reflect what all New Zealanders think about this issue So we found that around 66% of participants were supportive of euthanasia and 21.7% were neutral or unsure and 12.3% were strongly opposed Our findings suggest that the majority of New Zealanders are supportive of euthanasia when the question is framed in terms of a doctor being allowed to end the life of a patient who has a painful and incurable disease upon their request We also looked at demographic and psychological correlates that are associated with people's attitudes toward euthanasia and some of the key findings were that Pacific and Asian people tend to be less supportive of euthanasia whereas younger people tend to be more supportive of euthanasia So I suggest that perhaps because people from younger generations tend to have more permissive and liberal attitudes perhaps this is extending on to their views of euthanasia as well To conclude, as of 2015 it appears that most New Zealanders are supportive of euthanasia So looking at whether people's attitudes tend to change or stay consistent across time and since the NZVS is a longitudinal study it allows us to look at these changes and track people's attitudes across time which is a real advantage of our study And lastly I'd like to just thank all the participants who participate in our study because we really appreciate their contribution and if it wasn't for them then we wouldn't have access to such valuable data and findings