World Values Survey

The World Values Survey (WVS), a global research project, explores people's values and beliefs, how they change over time and what social and political impact they have. Since 1981 a worldwide network of social scientists have conducted representative national surveys as part of WVS in almost 100 countries.The growing globalization of the world makes it increasingly important to understand ... diversity. People with varying beliefs and values can live together and work together productively, but for this to happen it is crucial to understand and appreciate their distinctive worldviews.Indices The World Values Survey (WVS), a global research project, explores people's values and beliefs, how they change over time and what social and political impact they have. Since 1981 a worldwide network of social scientists have conducted representative national surveys as part of WVS in almost 100 countries. The WVS measures, monitors and analyzes: support for democracy, tolerance of foreigners and ethnic minorities, support for gender equality, the role of religion and changing levels of religiosity, the impact of globalization, attitudes toward the environment, work, family, politics, national identity, culture, diversity, insecurity, and subjective well-being. The findings provide information for policy makers seeking to build civil society and democratic institutions in developing countries. The work is also frequently used by governments around the world, scholars, students, journalists and international organizations and institutions such as the World Bank and the United Nations (UNDP and UN-Habitat). Data from the World Values Survey have (for example) been used to better understand the motivations behind events such as the Arab Spring, the 2005 French civil unrest, the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and the Yugoslav wars and political upheaval in the 1990s. Romano Prodi, former Prime Minister of Italy and the tenth President of the European Commission, said about WVS work: The WVS has over the years demonstrated that people's beliefs play a key role in economic development, the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions, the rise of gender equality, and the extent to which societies have effective government. Analysis of WVS data made by political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel asserts that there are two major dimensions of cross cultural variation in the world: The global cultural map shows how scores of societies are located on these two dimensions. Moving upward on this map reflects the shift from Traditional values to Secular-rational and moving rightward reflects the shift from Survival values to Self–expression values. Traditional values emphasize the importance of religion, parent-child ties, deference to authority and traditional family values. People who embrace these values also reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide. These societies have high levels of national pride and a nationalistic outlook. Secular-rational values have the opposite preferences to the traditional values. These societies place less emphasis on religion, traditional family values and authority. Divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide are seen as relatively acceptable.