Basic Human Values 1 |
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| Session Organisers | Professor Eldad Davidov (University of Cologne, Germany and University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland) Professor Peter Schmidt (University of Giessen, Giesen Germany) Professor Jan Ciecuich (Cardinal Stefan Wyszyéski University, Warsaw, Poland, and University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland) |
| Time | Tuesday 16th July, 16:00 - 17:00 |
| Room | D04 |
Values have held an important position in the social sciences since their inception. They have been used to explain the motivational bases of attitudes and behavior and to characterize differences between both individuals and societies. In 1992, Schwartz introduced a theory of ten basic human values, building on common elements in earlier approaches. The designers of the European Social Survey (ESS) chose this theory as the basis for developing a human values scale to include in the core of the survey. This theory has been extended to include 19 values (Schwartz et al., 2012) and a new scale, the PVQ-RR, has been developed to measure them.
In this session we welcome presentations on continuing work on basic human values as postulated by Schwartz, using the ESS and other data sources. Possible presentation topics may include (but are not limited to):
(1) the measurement of human values in various languages and cultures;
(2) values as predictors of attitudes, opinions and behaviour;
(3) values as consequences of various variables such as sociodemographic characteristics;
(4) value change and development among children, adolescents and adults, using various methods of data analysis for such data such, like latent growth curve modelling (LGM), mixture LGM, change scores, or autoregressive models, just to name a few;
(5) relations between different types of human values measurements (such as the PVQ-57, the PVQ-40 and the picture-based measures);
(6) multilevel and multigroup structural equation models using human values as individual and contextual predictors.
Both substantive and methodological papers using cross-sectional, cross-cultural or longitudinal datasets of basic human values are welcome.
Keywords: Basic human values; Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ); Value measurements; Value change
Ms Charlotte Clara Becker (University of Cologne) - Presenting Author
Professor Eldad Davidov (University of Cologne)
Professor Jan Cieciuch (Kardinal-Stefan-Wyszyński-Universität Warschau)
Professor René Algesheimer (University of Zurich)
Mr Martin Kindschi (University of Zurich)
Professor Heiko Rauhut (University of Zurich)
Mr Alexander Ehlert (University of Zurich)
Professor Claudio Tessone (University of Zurich)
The influence of basic human values on attitudes towards immigrants among school children in Switzerland and Poland
In the last few years, since the refugee crises, the debate about immigration as well as societies negative attitudes towards immigrants has become more prominent in European societies and politics. When analysing key determinants of these attitudes many researchers across the globe found the values held by the individual, especially those of universalism and conformity-tradition, to be of great relevance. So far however, these studies all used adult samples. Nothing is known about the relation among children. This is unfortunate, since studying the effect in children would reveal how deeply rooted negative attitudes towards immigrants are at a young age and how to explain them.
We expect results similar to those found in the studies on adults. High scores on the universalism values are expected to decrease negative attitudes towards immigrants, while higher scores on the conformity-tradition values should increase these attitudes. Further, we will examine whether the relations hold in two different countries: Switzerland and Poland.
For the analysis we utilize a Swiss-Polish panel data set (2015-2017) collected among school children by the research priority program “social networks” at the University of Zurich. The sample includes 5332 children aged 8 to 19. The young children’s (4th graders) values are measured by the Picture-Based Value Survey for Children (PBVS-C), while for older children (7th, 9th and 10th graders) a text-based version is used. For all age groups, attitudes towards immigrants were measured by graphically supported questions. The effects of the values on the attitudes are analysed using autoregressive cross-lagged models.
Preliminary results using the sample of older children indicate that universalism indeed decreases negative attitudes towards immigrants, while the expected effect for conformity-tradition was not found.
Mr Marcus Eisentraut (GESIS - Leibniz Institute of Social Sciences) - Presenting Author
Dr Keith Smith (GESIS - Leibniz Institute of Social Sciences)
Human values are substantive predictors of a broad range of social attitudes. VBN theory has noted the prominent role of values structuring orientations towards the environment (Stern and Dietz, 1999). Values also have a strong effect on attitudes toward immigration as well as attitudes toward different kinds of minorities (e.g. refugees, Muslims etc.). But, little remains known about whether environmental and immigrants attitudes are linked, or whether they share common individual values-based drivers.
We adopt the Schwartz Human Value scale available in the GESIS panel - novel data with representative samples of the adult population in Germany. Adopting SEM-based measurement models, we find that attitudes towards immigrants and the environment share a weak direct link, but rather, are resultant from similar common causes in human values patterning. In particular, ‘universalism’ is positively connected to environmental attitudes as well as attitudes toward immigration. In contrast, the values ‘power’ and ‘achievement’ are negatively associated with environmental attitudes, while ‘conservation’ has a strong negative effect on immigration attitudes. Further, we find that other political identification in specific parties (Green Party and the AfD) are also strongly linked to both environmental and immigrant values, independent of individual values.
Miss Daniela Wetzelhütter (University of Applied Science Upper Austria) - Presenting Author
Dr Chigozie Nnebedum (Godfrey Okoye University)
Dr Jacques De Wet (University of Capetown)
Professor Johann Bacher (Johannes Kepler University)
After developing his famous Theory of Values, Schwartz designed the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ) in order to measure human values. This instrument measures individual value orientations in terms of portraits of different people. For example, the first item in the female version of the questionnaire contains the following two statements: “Thinking up new ideas and being creative is important to her. She likes to do things in her own original way”. These two statements describe a person who values Self-direction. The first statement describes the importance of a valued goal to the person. The second statement describes the person’s feelings about the goal. Given that Schwartz’s PVQ is designed to measure people’s values, can it be minimally adapted to measure organizational values?
We report on a pilot study that attempted to minimally adapt the PVQ to measure organizational value orientations of universities as complex organizations. The PVQ was adapted stepwise and tested in a pilot study by doing a cognitive and standardized pretest at four universities; one from each of the following countries: Austria, South Africa, Germany and Nigeria. Based on the data collected, we tested for reliability and validity of the measurement instrument. Preliminary results show that internal consistence supports the adapted PVQ (PVQ-uni). However, several items are problematic since they do not fully prove homogeneity and/or are not fully independent from respondents’ personal values. Finally, we report on improvements made to the PVQ-uni, based on the results of the pilot study, and present the latest version of the PVQ-uni.