World Values Study Research Articles

Value factor of the countries uneven development

The authors consider reasons for the countries uneven development, provide sociological foundations for the study of this phenomenon, examine countries’ sociodynamics, reconstruct a map of countries development in the contemporary global world, and explore the trajectory of Belarus. The authors argue that the vector of sociodynamics is not predetermined, it depends on internal factors, and culture plays a key programming role. Value choice is an important factor determining the pace and direction of the contemporary society evolution. The article is based on the available data of international projects - European Values Study (EVS) and World Values Study (WVS). The period covered by these studies is forty years - from 1981 to 2021, and in Belarus surveys have been conducted since 1990. Authors’ generalizations are based on the Inglehart-Welzel model, and they confirm the hypothesis that the dynamics of value orientations in the Belarusian society follows the trajectory of changes that took place in Western Europe and North America in previous decades. The authors argue that social-demographic groups of the Belarusian society can be placed at different stages of the values transformation, i.e., urban and more educated population of Belarus (mainly the younger and middle-aged groups) are close to contemporary Czech Republic and Slovakia and slightly differ from Austria and Germany in terms of the value orientations.

Belarusian society: From the values of survival to the values of development and self-expression

The article considers new trends in the value system of the Belarusian society. Based on the data of the international sociological surveys conducted as waves of the European Values Study and World Values Study, the authors identify changes in the value orientations of the Belarusian society over the past thirty years. The authors use the methodological approach to identifying the system of value orientations that was developed by R. Inglehart and K. Welzel. The study of fundamental trends in the changing value world of the contemporary society is of practical importance for understanding internal factors of the current socialpolitical processes and for assessing prospects for the further sustainable development of socialpolitical institutions. The article aims at identifying the main directions in the transformation of the value orientations of the Belarusian society since the acquisition of state sovereignty. The authors conclude that the Belarusian society moves from the values of survival to the values of development and self-expression. In the project, the authors conducted an analysis of the demographic structure of the Belarusian society in terms of value priorities and found out that the demographic base of secular-individualistic and self-expression values consists of highly educated residents of large cities of younger (under 30) and middle (up to 49) age. Given the growth of the share of population with higher education and the second wave of urbanization (the outflow from small towns to large cities), we should expect an expansion of this demographic base and, accordingly, the further spread of these value orientations. In this situation, the education system acts as a source of the ongoing changes and develops the value matrix of the coming social reality.

Placing the 2020 Belarusian Protests in Historical Context: Political Attitudes and Participation during Lukashenko’s Presidency

AbstractIn the wake of the most recent protests in Belarus following the 2020 Presidential Election, it is useful to explore patterns of satisfaction with the political system, confidence in political institutions, and political participation at different points in time during President Lukashenko’s rule. We utilize Wave 3 of the World Values Study (WVS) and Wave 7 of the Joint European Values Study (EVS)/WVS to (1) analyze whether citizens’ dissatisfaction with the Belarusian government differed between 1996 and 2018, and (2) whether there was a change in political participation during that period. Responses over time suggest that satisfaction with the government and confidence in institutions was not lower in 2018 than it had been in 1996. However, as we discuss in the article, this may be an artifact of authoritarian consolidation and concern/fears about revealing preferences. We also find that the willingness to engage in protests remained more or less the same between these two time periods, especially among those dissatisfied with the political system. These results suggest that once highly dissatisfied citizens took to the streets in 2020, a number of internal and external factors might have triggered a bandwagon effect that pushed other citizens to also join the demonstrations.

Uncomfortably Numb: The Disconnect between Individual Human Rights Perceptions and State Human Rights Practices

Abstract:In this article I argue the average person does not have an accurate perception of their government’s human rights practices. Individuals are unable to accurately gauge their government’s human rights behaviours due to a conflation of indifference, personal biases, and focused reframing efforts by the government and other interested parties. This disconnect between state practice and individual perception creates an informational barrier for human rights activists and non-governmental organizations that threatens both their public support and their ability to meet objectives. I offer analysis of the above arguments by examining a survey question from the World Values Study that asks participants to rank their state’s human rights behaviour. I find that there is no direct correlation between these perceived rankings and the state s actual human rights practices. Further, I find that individuals living in states with higher existing levels of personal human rights are more likely to have a negative view of their state’s human rights performance. Finally, I find that individuals from states with a history of past political violence are more likely to demonstrate inflated perceptions of their state’s human rights practices. These findings elucidate the necessity for human rights organizations to take account of, and potentially combat, the disconnect between individuals’ human rights perceptions and states’ action when engaging in activism.

A comparative analysis of attitudes towards female and male breadwinners in Germany, Sweden and the United States

ABSTRACT This paper presents a comparative study that examines attitudes towards female and male breadwinners in Western societies. Data from Wave 6 of the World Values Study are used to analyse attitudes in three countries with historically different gender contracts: Germany (male breadwinner), Sweden (dual-breadwinner), and the United States (male breadwinner and female breadwinner). The findings indicate that although women are more likely than their male counterparts to believe men should not be entitled to jobs over women, they also view female breadwinners as problematic. Men are largely supportive of both men and women being a family’s financial breadwinner. Cross-national comparisons show that women and men in Germany have the most conservative views and that those in Sweden have more liberal beliefs. Accounting for differences in education and employment status did not explain the gender differences in attitudes. The impact of our findings for promoting greater gender equity is discussed.

ПОСТМАТЕРИЈАЛИЗАМ У СРБИЈИ

Ronald Inglhart's modernization theory provides a model of global value change, with affirmation of specific national paths of change. The paper considered the importance of the index of postmaterialism as a key element of the self-expression dimension. The distribution of (post)materialistic values in Serbia is presented based on data from the European Values Study and World Values Study from 2001, 2005 and 2008. The data indicate the presence of a stable structure in which the mixed and materialistic type predominates.The influence of sociodemographic factors on postmaterialism was examined by applying the regression analysis to the data from 2008. The results indicate a significant influence of the age, level of education and size of the city, while the impact of the amount of income is not statistically significant. The obtained results support Inglhart's theory of values, but do not exclude the effect of the life cycle.

East Asian wisdom and relativity

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is threefold. First, the paper demonstrates how inter-ocular testing (looking at the data) of Schwartz values from world values study (WVS) provides a surprisingly different picture to what the authors would expect from traditional mean comparison testing (t-tests, analysis of variance (ANOVA)). Second, the authors suggest that the ReVaMB model can be applied to an East Asian philosophical perspective. Relativity, the authors argue, is a factor when East Asian wisdom, philosophies and ideologies (Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and Legalism) “drive” outcomes such as work ethic. Third, the paper serves as an editorial to a special issue in CCSM on East Asian wisdom and its impact on business culture and performance in a cross-cultural context. Common themes are Yin Yang, how different cultures deal with paradox, and Zhong Yong, with accompanying concerns of how to conceptualise and deal with balance of opposites.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopted ten variables of the Schwartz values scales used in the WVS and subjected them to principle components analysis to reduce the number of variables. The authors found a two-factor solution: one relating to personal material success and adventure and excitement; another relating to success and personal recognition. The authors labelled these factors as Altruism and Hedonism. The analysis is based on an overall sample of 84,692 respondents in 60 countries. In addition to traditional statistical testing, the authors conduct inter-ocular testing. The authors also suggest that the ReVaMB model can be applied to East Asian wisdom.FindingsThree recommendations help to arrive at more accurate conclusions when comparing groups: the authors recommend to aspire to “consistent look and statistic”. If the data distribution does not agree with the statistics, then the researcher should take a closer look. To avoid misinterpreting statistics and other analysis, the authors recommend inter-ocular testing, i.e. eyeballing data in a scientific fashion. The authors provide specific examples how to do that. The authors recommend to test for common-language effect size (CLE), and also recommend a new rule of thumb, i.e. a split of 60/40 as minimum difference to make any generalisation; 70/30 is worth considering. The rule of thumb contributes to better differentiation between real and “not real” differences.Originality/valueThe authors introduce two concepts: the “inter-ocular test”, which simply means to “look at your data”, and the Chinese word, 错觉 (Cuòjué) which roughly translates to “illusion”, “wrong impression”, or “misconception”. This study argues against accepting simplistic averages for data analysis. The authors provide evidence that an inter-ocular test provides a more comprehensive picture of data when comparing groups rather than simply relying on traditional statistical mean comparison testing. The “word of caution” is to avoid premature conclusions on group comparisons with statistical testing alone. The authors also propose an extension of the original ReVaMB model from a confucian orientation to a broad East Asian philosophical perspective. Culture does determine attitudes and behaviour which in turn contribute to the shaping of cultures, depending on situation, context, location and time. The “context” for a situation to occur should be tested as moderators, for example, between East Asian wisdom (Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and Legalism) and behavioural or attitudinal dimensions such as work ethic.

The Social Norm to Work and the Well-Being of the Short- and Long-Term Unemployed

Why are the unemployed particularly unhappy in some societies? According to the social norm theory of unemployment, the well-being of the non-employed is lower in countries with a strong social norm to work because of the greater stigma attached to unemployment. In this study, a social norm to work has been defined as the extent to which people expect others to work: do people think the unemployed should take any job they are offered, or should they have a right to refuse? The combined world and European values study and the European social survey were used to test the theory. Multilevel analyses show that—net of one’s own norm and other measures of the social norm to work, such as one’s personal work ethic—the well-being of unemployed men is lower in countries with a strong social norm to work, in particular that of the long-term unemployed. Overall, it appears that the social norm to work still weighs more heavily upon men than women.

ГЕНДЕРНЫЕ УСТАНОВКИ МИГРАНТОВ-МУСУЛЬМАН В ЗАПАДНОЙ ЕВРОПЕ: МНОГОУРОВНЕВЫЙ НЕИЕРАРХИЧЕСКИЙ АНАЛИЗ

The article examines the attitudes of Muslim migrants in Western Europe to gender equality in the labor market measured using the statement «When jobs are scarce, men should have priority over women». Applying a multilevel non-hierarchical regression analysis of the combined and harmonized datasets from the European Social Survey (ESS), World Values Study (WVS) and European Values Study (EVS), the author compares the migrant attitudes with the attitudes of European residents, as well as with values in twelve Islamic countries of origin. The survey shows that the migrants’ attitudes are generally closer to the society of destination than to the society of origin; however the Muslim migrants assimilate slower than others, and their attitudes are considerably more egalitarian than attitudes in the societies of origin though more patriarchal than attitudes in the societies or destination.

Consuming Work: Youth Labor in America By Yasemin Besen-Cassino Temple University Press. 2014. 202 pp. $25.95 paper

Consuming Work: Youth Labor in America by Yasemin Besen-Cassino is a promising yet vexing book. Foremost, it is promising in its detailed examination of the intersection of work, consumption, and leisure for middle- and upper-class (mostly white) college students who work in “cool” but low-wage retail jobs. These students take such jobs not for the paycheck, Besen-Cassino finds, but for the chance to socialize and become associated with the brand, while also taking advantage of employee discounts. Thus, for these particular workers at least, Besen-Cassino argues, work itself becomes “a branded experience to be consumed by young people” (17). The data for this study are drawn primarily from an ethnography of “Coffee Bean,” an upscale coffee shop located in an affluent suburb which, according to one of its supervisors, seeks to hire “cool people” with the “right vibe” (31), who also happen to be almost exclusively white and affluent. In 2001 Besen-Cassino observed workers at two branches of the coffee shop and conducted interviews with forty workers between the ages of 18–21, all but two of whom were white and all middle- or upper-class. Besen-Cassino supplemented her ethnographic data with survey data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth and the World Values Study, which allows her to situate youth labor in the United States among other industrialized countries. She also conducted two later waves of interviews with more racially and socioeconomically diverse student workers in another state, yet she does not seem to draw heavily from these interviews in the book. With the exception of one chapter based on survey data, Besen-Cassino’s ethnography of “Coffee Bean” is the foundation of the book.

Evaluating Measurement Invariance in Categorical Data Latent Variable Models with the EPC-Interest

Many variables crucial to the social sciences are not directly observed but instead are latent and measured indirectly. When an external variable of interest affects this measurement, estimates of its relationship with the latent variable will then be biased. Such violations of “measurement invariance” may, for example, confound true differences across countries in postmaterialism with measurement differences. To deal with this problem, researchers commonly aim at “partial measurement invariance” that is, to account for those differences that may be present and important. To evaluate this importance directly through sensitivity analysis, the “EPC-interest” was recently introduced for continuous data. However, latent variable models in the social sciences often use categorical data. The current paper therefore extends the EPC-interest to latent variable models for categorical data and demonstrates its use in example analyses of U.S. Senate votes as well as respondent rankings of postmaterialism values in the World Values Study.

Propensity to Support Sustainability Initiatives: A Cross-National Model

Businesses and the social sciences are increasingly facing calls to further scholarship dedicated to understand sustainability. Furthermore, multinationals are also facing similar calls given their high profile and their role in environmental degradation. However, a literature review shows that there is very limited understanding of sustainability at a cross-national level. Given the above gaps, we contribute to the literature by examining how selected GLOBE [House et al., Culture, leadership and organizations: The GOBE study of 62 societies. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, 2004] cultural dimensions are related to individuals’ propensity to support sustainability initiatives in 33 countries. We use data from the World Values Survey [World Values Study Group, World Values Surveys and European Value Surveys, 1999–2001. Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Ann Arbor, 2004] and test our hypotheses using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). Results support all but one hypothesis. Specifically, uncertainty avoidance is not related to propensity to support sustainability initiatives. In contrast, performance orientation and assertiveness have the desired negative relationship with our dependent variable while collectivism, future orientation, and human orientation have the desired positive relationship. We discuss the conceptual and practical implications of this study.

Welfare state attitudes and economic integration in the European Union, 1992–2002: a multilevel investigation across 24 countries

This study continues earlier research efforts that investigated the impact of the European Union (EU) on welfare states by examining the relationship between the welfare state attitudes of citizens and the economic dimension of European integration. Two waves from the European and World Values Study (EVS/WVS) are combined with UNCTAD data about EU trade. Multilevel analysis of this dataset including 67,346 individuals from the EU member states shows that there is a curvilinear relationship (a reversed U) between welfare state attitudes and economic integration in the EU.

Evaluation of child imagination in European cultural-historical context

Encouraging child imagination is a desirable for developing creativity in youth and adulthood, and creativity is viewed as one of the solutions to the problems the contemporary word is facing. The aim of this paper is to examine the linkage between macro-social factors and evaluation of imagination as a characteristic that should be encouraged in children. For analysis we used data on European countries encompassed by the World Values Study (1999-2004). The results indicate that wealthier and more developed countries and the citizens who are more postmaterialist oriented value imagination more. However, once cultural-historical heritage of the country is included into the analysis, evaluation of imagination changes, thus confirming the importance of living in the communist regime and, on the other hand, the influence of socialization patterns defined by the dominant religion (Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism or Islam). The concluding part discusses the implications of these results for supporting creativity in young people and contributing to the development of contemporary society which requires reliance on individual abilities and responsibilities in order to progress.

The Effect of Confucian Values on Support for Democracy and Human Rights in Taiwan

Recent years have seen a great deal of interest in the extent to which ”Asian values,” or Confucian ideology, inhibit a country's acceptance of liberal-democratic values. Much of that research, however, focused on the experience of nondemocratic states, concentrated on theory rather than empirical analysis, was written before the complete democratization of Taiwan, and/or created a pan-Confucian-values index instead of estimating the effects of the main components of Confucianism (family loyalty, social hierarchies, and social harmony) individually. In this article, we review theoretical arguments for why Confucian values would decrease public support for democratization, women’s rights, and freedom of speech. We then use OLS and Logit to estimate models of data from the Taiwan subsamples of the 1995 World Values Study and the 2001 East Asia Barometer. Our results indicate that adherence to Confucian values did not consistently undermine public support for liberal democracy in 1995 and even increased support for some liberal-democratic values in 2001. Our findings thus disconfirm previous empirical research on this question. The article concludes by discussing how Confucian and liberal-democratic values might reinforce rather than undermine each other.

Values in Serbia in second age of modernity

The starting point for this article were the implications of Inglehart’s theory of post-materialism and the revised modernization theory, as well as the data from the fourth wave of World Values Study. On the basis of these, the aim of this article was to compare the values which were characteristic for Serbia at the end of the last millennium with the values of the majority of European countries. Using the methodology practiced in the analysis of the same type, it was shown where we should place Serbia among these European countries. The main characteristics of values in Serbia are the following: the great amount of risk and uncertainty, low levels of trust in others and institutions and widespread "materialistic" values. The combination of these indicators puts Serbia in the group of under-developed ex-comminist countries undergoing the process of transition and early democratization.

Who Demonstrates? Antistate Rebels, Conventional Participants, or Everyone?

Many studies have drawn attention to rising levels of political protest, whether understood as the spread of democracy, the growth of the society, or an expression of global civic society.1 They raise important questions about the causes and consequences of this development, in particular about who demonstrates. Analysis of this problem also raises familiar methodological chal lenges about how far ad hoc and irregular protest activities can be measured through traditional survey techniques and event (content) analysis.2 Commonly used to explain and interpret demonstration activism are antistate, resource-based, and con textual theories. They can be evaluated by comparing the 1973-76 baseline Political Action study with successive waves of the World Values study, 1981-2001, to estab lish cross-national trends in the extent of protest activity. Belgium, the focus of this study, is a postindustrial society that exemplifies the rise of protest politics. The 1999 Belgian-Flanders general election study provides a representative cross-section of the electorate and can be supplemented by a unique series of surveys of protestors engaged in a range of seven different demonstrations in Belgium. Through these sur veys it is possible to analyze who demonstrates in Belgium, comparing the social and attitudinal characteristics of party members, civic joiners, and demonstrators, and to evaluate models among those actually engaged in different demonstrations.

Social trust: individual and cross-national approaches

Social trust is often said to be the essence of social capital. Trusting citizens are good citizens. Theorists argue that voluntary associations are crucial to the association between trust and social capital, on the one hand, and vibrant and stable democracy, on the other. Unfortunately, there is not a great deal of convincing evidence to support this important theory. At the individual level, it is rather hard to explain the origins of trust insofar as it is not closely associated with many of the usual array of social characteristics such as education, income, class, race, age, or gender. Most research deals with social trust at the individual level. However, there are theoretical reasons to expect social capital to operate at the societal level of social systems - local, regional, or national. If we turn our attention to the cross-national comparison of countries then we do discover a close association between measures of social capital and democratic development. Comparing 60 countries covered by the third wave of the World Values Study shows that social trust is strongly associated with a range of societal characteristics that underpin democratic development and stability.

Mokken Scale Analysis: Between the Guttman Scale and Parametric Item Response Theory

This article introduces a model of ordinal unidimensional measurement known as Mokken scale analysis. Mokken scaling is based on principles of Item Response Theory (IRT) that originated in the Guttman scale. I compare the Mokken model with both Classical Test Theory (reliability or factor analysis) and parametric IRT models (especially with the one-parameter logistic model known as the Rasch model). Two nonparametric probabilistic versions of the Mokken model are described: the model of Monotone Homogeneity and the model of Double Monotonicity. I give procedures for dealing with both dichotomous and polytomous data, along with two scale analyses of data from the World Values Study that demonstrate the usefulness of the Mokken model.

Islam & the West: Testing the Clash of Civilizations Thesis

In seeking to understand the root causes of the events of 9/11 many accounts have turned to Samuel P. Huntington's provocative and controversial thesis of a of civilizations, arousing strong debate. Evidence from the 1995-2001 waves of the World Values Study provide survey evidence allowing us, for the first time, to sift the truth in this debate by comparing attitudes and values in 75 societies around the globe, including many Islamic and Western states. The results confirm the first claim in Huntington's thesis: culture does matter, and indeed matters a lot, so that religious legacies leave their distinct imprint on contemporary values. But Huntington is essentially mistaken in assuming that the core clash between the West and Islamic worlds concerns democracy, as the evidence suggests striking similarities in the political values held in these societies. It remains true that Islamic nations differ from the West on issues of religious leadership, but this is not a simple dichotomous clash, as many countries around the globe display similar attitudes to Islam. Moreover the original thesis fails to identify the primary cultural fault line between the West and Islam, concerning the social issues of gender equality and sexual liberalization. The values separating Islam and the West revolve far more centrally around Eros than Demos.