Refutations Affirmed: Conversations Concerning the E-Euro-Barometer Values Battery

Abstract

The present issue of the Political Research Quarterly includes a stimulating new contribution by Darren Davis to the debate concerning the Euro-Barometer (E-B) battery. Davis (2000) argues that the measure of materialist and post-materialist values provided by the battery (the MMP variable) has at best only very limited utility for understanding a variety of important political beliefs, attitudes, and opinions in the American electorate. The purpose of the present article is twofold. First, I will comment on selected methodological issues raised by Davis for enhancing understanding of the measurement of values and value change in advanced industrial and other societies. Second, as a party to the values debate, I will discuss my “conversations in context” critique of the E-B values battery and present new, hitherto unpublished, experimental evidence that buttresses the validity of the critique. Like Davis, I argue that the E-B battery is deeply flawed. My story of the failure of the E-B battery illustrates how the structure and content of a survey instrument can interact with the sociopolitical and economic contexts in which interviews occur to mislead analysts. A larger message is that if the history of science is a reliable guide, research questioning the validity of the E-B battery-however well grounded in fact and logic-is likely to have limited impact, until and unless a credible rival theory appears to challenge the value shift thesis.