 The New Zealand Attitudes and Values study started in 2009 and back then with our limited funding we surveyed about 6,500 people and we're now going into our 7th year. So we've been following people now for just about to go into their 7th year. So we've got a lot of data already and we've already seen so much change in New Zealand over that period of time with New Zealand coming out of a recession with changes in global politics, changes in government, elections, things like this for Christchurch earthquakes, probably the absolutely huge thing that's happened in New Zealand and affected ever so many people. And our study's been going through that entire time so we can see how people were doing, what their attitudes, values, their health, their well-being, their connection with their families and friends, their personality, what all of these things were like for people at the start back in 2009 and how those might have changed or how they might remain stable over time. And so being a 20-year study, our goal is to be able to look at rates of change and talk about what's happening in New Zealand over a 20-year time span. What got me interested as I've always been interested in trying to understand how people's values, how their attitudes toward others, how their personality and how their satisfaction with their life, their levels of social support, how these types of psychological variables can change for people over time and what might predict or cause some people to change more than others. And psychology actually doesn't know very much about long-term change in people, especially change in relation to changes in economics or broad changes in society in general. So I wanted to answer some of those questions and in particular what I most want to do with the study and what got me really started is by being able to model or statistically estimate how people are changing, changing in different communities, changing in different areas of New Zealand, by being able to understand what those rates of change are and some very complex processes we can predict where we're going. And that to me is a fascinating question. I mean one of the fundamental goals of the study is to do work for New Zealand relevant to New Zealanders. And what we want to do is we want to identify how people are changing, when people are having problems, when communities might not be integrating as well as they could, when people are experiencing psychological distress or when there are health risks on the horizon that we can predict. These are all incredibly important issues for New Zealand that we need to understand here in this country, rather than simply relying on research and using samples of people from other countries or other nations which might not apply to what is happening here on the ground in New Zealand. So I mean every single one of our participants has just been so generous in completing our questionnaires and in doing so every year and we're ever so indebted to them. The thing that amazes me is how many people have got behind this study and are willing to participate in it. I think people really see the value in being involved in something like this and we're a small country so every person in the study really contributes their voice to our ability to answer questions that are relevant across the board. One of the most important things for us is to have a representative sample so that when we talk about averages or percentages or how people are feeling, how people are recovering from the Christchurch earthquakes, what's happening in Auckland or in Wellington or anywhere in the country, that our estimates are reliable and actually representative of what is going on. We have a long road ahead of us, 13, maybe 14 more years left in the study so we're about a third of the way through and it's been a lot of work to get it to this point. Work that could only be done because there's such a big team of people involved in the project. I just can't stress that enough. You're only seeing one person here, you're only seeing me but I'm truly just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the amount of effort and time that so many people put into the study. So the next 13 years are going to be more hard work to keep our participants involved and interested to provide feedback, relevant findings that help inform our society and provide information about what's happening in New Zealand and allow us to predict trends into the future and I think if we can keep doing that well using good science then we should stay healthy and we should be able to maintain the study and keep it going for its entire time frame. I think everything like this in New Zealand, we're always operating on a shoestring budget so we never have certainty but I think we deliver, we deliver on our goals. So one thing people ask us often is well my attitudes haven't changed or I don't feel that they've changed so do I need to complete the questionnaire every year and the answer is absolutely for people if they possibly have the time completing it every year is ever so important because that observation raises a really important point but I think it's missed a lot and that is the question of well who changes and why do people change versus why do some people stay stable, why do they not change, why are they so consistent over time and you can't look at one process without looking at the other process as well and so we need all of that information. Also if people don't complete the questionnaire every year then our sample becomes less representative so we're less sure of our conclusions when we talk about averages across New Zealand as a whole. So yes completing the questionnaire every year is the single most important thing that people could do to help with the study if they're involved with it.