Public Opinion Quarterly Advance Access originally published online on August 21, 2008
Public Opinion Quarterly 2008 72(3):420-445; doi:10.1093/poq/nfn035
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Bringing Values Back In
The Adequacy of the European Social Survey to Measure Values in 20 Countries
Address correspondence to Eldad Davidov; e-mail: davidov{at}za.uni-koeln.de, E_Davidov{at}gmx.de
The Schwartz (1992) theory of basic human values has promoted a revival of empirical research on values. The semi-annual European Social Survey (ESS) includes a new 21-item instrument to measure the importance of the 10 basic values of the theory. Representative national samples in 20 countries responded to the instrument in 2002–3. We briefly describe the theory and the ESS instrument and assess its adequacy for measuring values across countries. Using multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses, augmented with mean-structure information, we assess the configural and measurement (metric) invariance of the values—necessary conditions for equivalence of the meaning of constructs and scalar invariance—a precondition for comparing value means across countries. Only if such equivalence is established can researchers make meaningful and clearly interpretable cross-national comparisons of value priorities and their correlates. The ESS values scale demonstrates configural and metric invariance, allowing researchers to use it to study relationships among values, attitudes, behavior and socio-demographic characteristics across countries. Comparing the mean importance of values across countries is possible only for subsets of countries where scalar invariance holds.
ELDAD DAVIDOV is with the GESIS-Central Archive for Empirical Social Research, and University of Cologne, 50923 Cologne, Germany. PETER SCHMIDT is with the University of Giessen, Faculty of Social Sciences, Karl-Gloeckner Str. 22E, 35394, Giessen, Germany. SHALOM H. SCHWARTZ is with the Department of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the RC33 conference, Amsterdam 2004, RC28 conference, Oslo 2005, first ESRA conference, Barcelona 2005, and two research seminars of QMSS1 held by Willem Saris, Lugano 2004 and 2006, with the financial support of the European Science Foundation. We would also like to thank Willem Saris and Jaak Billiet for helpful comments on earlier versions of this study. Work on this article was conducted with the help of the German Israeli Foundation (GIF), Project No. I-769–241.4. The work of the third author on this research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation Grant No. 921/02–1.
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