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JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

behaviour. This may be because the modal values of society
have been consciously or unconsciously rejected by the criminal,
or because they have not been internalised to the same extent as
by the non-criminal.“ The author found out that delinquent
women often reject the woman`s role because they do not
appreciate values that society designs for this woman`s role.

In 2002, Czech researchers carried out unique research on
convicted women`s value preferences. Among other topics, this
research compared the value preferences of this specific group of
respondents with the Czech population`s value preferences. They
used the questionnaire method, and they researched a sample of
322 female respondents in four Czech prisons. There was a set of
27 value items, and they assessed them with a nine-point
evaluating scale. „Traditionally, in the first place appeared the
value of health, then a calm life and wellbeing (family, freedom,
peace, children, living, friends, success at work). Subsequently,
there followed values related to future and mental life (to create
something stable, time for oneself, love), status values
(popularity, financial security, education, social position). In the
end, they mentioned spiritual values (culture, art, belief in God),
a holiday and a car.“

(Urbanová, Večeřa, 2003, p. 237). There

were not evident more significant differences when compared to
the Czech population. Slovak sociologists Lubelcová,

Džambazovič (2006) followed up on this research in Slovak
conditions. However, they did not focus on value orientations,
but only on social and criminological characteristic features.

To reflect these theoretical starting points, we proposed the
following research questions:

RQ

: What are the importance levels of chosen values?

: Is the importance level of chosen values in a statistically

significant correlation with the female respondents` age?

: Will there exist a statistically significant difference in the

values` importance level regarding the respondents` achieved
level of education?

2 Research sample

In Slovakia, the imprisonment sentence of convicted women
primarily occurs in two specialised facilities – the Correctional

facility Levoča (capacity of 112 places) and the Correctional
facility Nitra – Chrenová (capacity of 354 places), where we
carried out our research. In 2017, when we collected our data,
there were, in total, 630 convicted women (basic set, Yearbook
of Prison and Court Guard Service from the year 2017, 2018).

Our research sample consisted of 186 adult women, representing
a percentage rate of 29,5% (almost

⅓ of female respondents

from the basic set). During the data collection time, the average
number of convicted women in the correctional facility Nitra-
Chrenová was 252 women. Thus, up to 73,8% of convicted
women from the given facility participated in our research. The
research set included imprisoned convicted women in all three
surveillance degrees.

We divided respondents into six categories according to their age
(19-21 years; 22-25 years; 26-30 years; 31-45 years; 46-60
years; 61 and more years, and finally, not mentioned age). The
average age of respondents was 38,43 years (min 20; max 66).
The educational level of respondents was heterogeneous; up to
50% of respondents achieved primary education (low education,
level of ISCED 2A), 16,12% of respondents achieved secondary
education without a school-leaving exam (medium education,
level of ISCED 3C) and secondary education with a school-
leaving exam (medium education, level of ISCED 3A; 3B).
Only about 2,5% of respondents achieved academic education
(high education, level of ISCED 6 or 7).

Figure 1: Categorisation of female respondents according to their
age and educational level

However, statistically, it is not possible to evaluate the group of
five respondents with academic education separately. For this
reason, we divided the category of respondents with secondary
education into two groups: a group with a school-leaving exam
(level of ISCED 3A or 3B) and a group without a school-leaving
exam (level of ISCED 3C). We included respondents with the
academic education (level of ISCED 6 or 7) in the group with
complete secondary education with a school-leaving exam. We
continued processing obtained data in categories divided in this
way.

2.1 Instruments

In the research, we used a questionnaire in print form, designed
by the author. After a personal delivery, employees of the given
facility (executive director for the Imprisonment Department,
employees in duty, pedagogue) directly administered this
questionnaire to convicted women. It consisted of 25 items; four
items were of socio-demographic character (age, achieved
education, marital status and number of children). The items
were predominantly closed or semi-closed with a choice of
answers, two items had a scale (a four-level and five-level scale).
The research tool primarily focused on the education of
convicted women in the correctional facility. However, the
questionnaire also aimed at adult convicted women`s values and
attitudes. The Cronbach`s alpha

of the questionnaire is α = 0.764

Concerning these values, we set one item where convicted
women attributed the importance level to fifteen values on a
four-level scale (very important – rather important – rather not
important – not important at all). Subsequently, we put these
importance levels into a statistical relationship with chosen
demographic statistic criteria (age and educational level). Based

on the methodology from the research by Urbanová, Večeřa,
(2003), we formulated the basic value orientations in this item:
modern materialistic values (hedonistic orientation such as
Money, Work, Travelling, Art), modern idealistic values
(integrating values such as Friends, Partner relationship,
Children), and traditional values (sense of order in the form of
Tolerance, Justice, Dignity, conservative values such as Health,
Family, Education, Freedom, and finally, the religious
orientation in the form of Belief in God).

2.2 Statistical analysis

We statistically processed the obtained data in the programme
SPSS version 22 for Windows. We used the descriptive statistics
methods (N, M, SEM, SD, Min, Max, SK, KU) and inferential
statistics methods: normality tests for data distribution,
correlation tests and comparative tests. To find out the
relationship between the variables, we used the Spearman`s
correlation coefficient. Furthermore, to obtain differences
regarding the research sub-groups, we applied the Kruskal-
Wallis H test. We chose these tests based on the normality test
results for data distribution (D'Agostino`s K

test; Tomšik,

2017).

3 Results

In the first part of the results` interpretation, we focused on the
descriptive statistical analysis of particular variables (values) and
their relations to female respondents` age. The respondents

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