Bringing values back in: the adequacy of the European Social Survey to measure values in 20 countries

摘要

Values are prominent in public discourse today. Theorists have long considered values central tounderstanding attitudes and behavior. The Schwartz (1992) theory of basic human values haspromoted 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 ten basic values of thetheory. 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 measuringvalues across countries. Using multiple group confirmatory factor analyses, augmented withmean-structure information, we assess the configural and measurement (metric) invariance of thevalues—necessary conditions for equivalence of the meaning of constructs, and scalarinvariance—a precondition for comparing value means across countries. Only if suchequivalence is established can researchers make meaningful and clearly interpretable cross-national comparisons of value priorities and their correlates. The ESS values scale demonstratesconfigural and metric invariance, allowing researchers to use it to study relationships amongvalues, attitudes, behavior and socio-demographic characteristics across countries. Comparingthe mean importance of values across countries is possible only for subsets of countries wherescalar invariance holds.