ESRA 2025 Preliminary Program
All time references are in CEST
European Values Study and World Values Survey: Substantive Findings and Methodological Challenges in value research 2 |
| Session Organisers |
Dr Vera Lomazzi (European Values Study/ University of Bergamo)
Dr Kseniya Kizilova (World Values Survey Association)
Professor Ruud Luijkx (European Values Study/Tilburg University)
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| Time | Tuesday 15 July, 11:00 - 12:15 |
| Room |
Ruppert rood - 0.51 |
The European Values Study (EVS) and the World Values Survey (WVS) are two large-scale comparative time-series survey research programs studying people’s values, norms and beliefs. Since 1981, these programmes have jointly carried out representative national surveys in over 120 countries and societies containing 92 percent of the world’s population representing an invaluable data source for a global network of scholars and international development agencies, including the World Bank, the UNDP, the WHO, the OECD, regional development banks etc. Over the years, the EVS and the WVS have proven the importance of population value study and have demonstrated that people’s beliefs play a key role in economic development, emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions, rise of gender equality, and the extent to which societies have effective government.
We welcome submissions based on EVS/WVS data addressing substantive and/or methodological aspects of value research.
The recently published joint EVS-WVS dataset (2017-2022) and the EVS-WVS trend file (1981-2022) allow social and political sciences to broaden and deepen their analysis. Present session invites papers which make use of the EVS/WVS data -solely or in combination with other types of data- to address a broad scope of issues, including political culture and political attitudes, support for democracy and political participation, perceptions of gender equality and moral values, identity and trust, civil society, corruption, solidarity, and migration among the others.
We also invite papers addressing the projects’ methodological aspects, including challenges and limitations such as reliability and equivalence of employed scales and indicators, non-responses, combining self- and interviewer-administered mode and other. The panel particularly invites papers comparing findings collected via different survey methods in the same countries allowing to estimate the reliability of online surveys as well as to discuss the challenges and
Keywords: values, WVS, EVS
Papers
Digitalization and Institutional Confidence in Gulf Cooperation Countries
Dr Tatiana Karabchuk (UAE University) - Presenting Author
Dr Osman Antwi Boetang (UAE University)
Public institutions are the catalyst for development and the well-being of the citizens of a state. The national confidence in state institutions depends on how they are viewed by the public as fulfilling their mandate to the benefit of the society. Technological advancements and the increasing digitalization of all spheres of society has shaped public opinion about the performance of governments and public institutions. Hence, this research highlights the relationship between digitalization of society and confidence in national institutions in the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC). Using the biggest individual cross-national survey data from the World Value Survey, waves of 2005-2022, the research results demonstrates that there is a positive correlation between digitalization at the country level, Internet usage for news and social media usage at the individual level and confidence in the courts, mass media and other national institutions
Evaluating Measurement Mode Effects in a Cross-National Survey
Dr Pablo Christmann (GESIS) - Presenting Author
Professor Alexandru Cernat (University of Manchester)
Professor Tobias Gummer (GESIS)
Professor Joeseph Sakshaug (Institute for Employment Research)
Transitioning from interviewer-administered to self-completion or mixed-mode data collection can reduce costs and sustain response rates but risks compromising data quality and cross-national comparability due to measurement mode effects. These effects may arise because interviewer- and self-administered modes differ in measurement properties, with evidence showing that respondents often provide different answers to the same questions depending on the mode. Variations in response styles also play a role: interviewer-administered (aural) modes tend to be more prone to recency effects, while self-completion (visual) modes exhibit primacy effects and greater susceptibility to satisficing behaviours, such as straightlining. Researchers are therefore encouraged to keep self-completion questionnaires short to maintain respondent engagement. However, adapting long interviewer-administered questionnaires into shorter self-completion versions can be challenging. Removing questions may undermine research goals, while using matrix sampling retains all questions but may diminish measurement comparability with the full-length version.
We address these challenges by analysing a large-scale cross-national mode design experiment conducted in five countries as part of the European Values Study (EVS) in 2017/2018. Randomly selected general population samples in each country were assigned to one of three designs: face-to-face, mixed-mode paper/web with a full-length questionnaire, or mixed-mode paper/web with a shorter matrix-sampled questionnaire. Our analysis included 118 attitudinal items and 21 scales, assessing key data quality indicators (e.g., item nonresponse, response styles) and substantive estimates (e.g., mean comparisons, standard deviations, Cohen’s d). Additionally, we tested measurement equivalence for the 21 scales within and across countries using 504 equivalence testing models. These findings provide guidance to survey practitioners and cross-national research programmes on the implications of transitioning from interviewer-administered to self-administered mixed-mode designs.
Measuring Ethical Attitudes with Multiple Modes of Administration: Findings from the Joint Wave, World Values Survey and the European Values Study
Dr Melike Sarac (Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies) - Presenting Author
Professor Ismet Koc (Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies)
It is well known that the quality of survey statistics can suffer from overreporting or underreporting, which leads to measurement error. This problem may be more pronounced in the case of questions, which is why the use of multiple survey modes is preferred in some surveys. The use of mixed mode surveys has been on the rise in the twenty-first century with the main concerns of high response and reducing cost. The study aims to examine the relationship between mode of administration (e.g., Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) and Computer-Assisted Web Interviewing (CAWI)) and measuring attitudes towards ethical norms, which are highly concentrated in the World Values Survey (WVS) and the European Values Study (EVS). The data provides detailed information about social values and stereotypes, happiness and well-being, social trust and organizational membership, perceptions of migration and security, religiousness, political interest, political participation, and ethical attitudes. The multiple regression results suggest that the level of reporting of ethical attitudes is significantly higher when the CAWI mode is used than when the CAPI mode is used for Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Great Britain. The analyses also controlled for respondent and country-specific characteristics. Strategies concerning survey design will be discussed on the basis of the study findings. We encourage adding web-based parts to social surveys, particularly sensitive questions, to collect more accurate data. Similarly, EVS (2022) highlighted the more sustainable and timely data for attitudes and beliefs of European citizens thanks to the mixed-mode design approach. This study adds to our current knowledge by presenting empirical evidence of the impact of survey mode on measuring ethical attitudes.
EVS. (2022). Mixed-Mode. Mixed-Mode Implementation in the EVS. Available at https://europeanvaluesstudy.eu/methodology-data-documentation/survey-2017/methodology/mixed-mode/
Beyond Generalizations: Variance and Consistency of Values Typologies
Dr Andrea Turković (University of Milan) - Presenting Author
While cross-national surveys like the European Values Study provide standardized measures for variables such as income or education, researchers often build on these by constructing typologies and categorizations. For values and attitudes, where standardized measures are largely absent, these typologies—typically based on intuitive or theory-driven principles—apply uniform grouping across diverse samples without testing for measurement invariance. As a result, such typologies may fail to account for the context dependency of values and attitudes.
This paper focuses on one such typology: religiosity typology, defined by denomination and religious service attendance. Using data from the fifth wave of the European Values Study (EVS-5, 2022) across 36 European countries, we examine the variance and consistency of the typology. To identify patterns and test for measurement consistency, we applied a three-step approach: (1) Latent Class Analysis (LCA) on the pooled dataset to identify a general typology, (2) country-specific LCA to explore within-country variance, and (3) multi-group LCA to assess cross-national measurement consistency and context sensitivity.
By analysing religious-historical contexts, particularly in understudied Orthodox countries, we identify where typological consistency persists and where it does not. Preliminary results reveal a consistent 3-class typology across all countries, supporting configural invariance. However, class definitions and sizes vary significantly between contexts, showing no evidence of metric or scalar invariance. This variation is particularly evident in Orthodox-majority countries, where affiliation and holy day observance dominate, compared to Catholic and secular contexts, which exhibit distinct patterns of regular and irregular attendance. These findings challenge assumptions of universal categorizations in typology building in cross-national surveys like the European Values Study. We highlight their context-sensitivity—particularly for values and attitudes—and underscore the need for more rigorous testing of invariance and robustness of such categorizations.
