(Mis)Measuring Value Change: A brief postscript

Abstract

In their rejoinder to our critique, Abramson, Ellis, and Inglehart claim that the four-item Euro-Barometer battery provides a valid measure of the value orientations citizens in advanced industrial societies. We are not persuaded. Our analyses indicate that the battery is seriously flawed, and that the dynamics of response to it over the past two decades provide a classic illustration of what we have termed the "conversations in context" problem in survey research. There is no need to reiterate the details of our argument and supporting empirical evidence here. Rather, we will confine our attention to three larger methodological and theoretical points that may suggest a way forward for those interested in comparative studies of the nature and dynamics of values and related aspects of public political psychology. Point 1 concerns how the structure and content of a survey instrument can interact with the changing context in which the instrument is administered. We have argued that sharp variations in macroeconomic conditions since the mid-1970s have done much to produce the over-time pattern in responses to the Euro-Barometer surveys that prompt Inglehart and his associates to conclude that these data support the materialist to postmaterialist value shift thesis. However, the point is much more general than the present controversy; at issue is the larger question of how social scientists measure the dynamics of political beliefs, attitudes, and opinions, and how they interpret