Standardization & Validation of a Test of Values

The aim of the present study is to construct a psychological test for measuring human values. Following the "lexical approach", in a previous investigation 2 raters extracted an exhaustive taxonomy of human values from a German lexicon. 6 other judges revised this list and 621 nouns and 559 adjectives resulted. 194 respondents, 144 women and 50 men, 127 from Austria and 67 from Germany, with a mean age of 32 yrs. (SD = 13.1) from a variety of professions rated the concepts as guiding motives in their lives on an 11-point scale. Factor analysis yielded 5 identical orthogonal factors for nouns and adjectives that explained 37.2 and 38.7% of the variance respectively: (a) Harmony, (b) Intellectualism, (c) Religiosity, (d) Societal Adjustment, (e) Power. On the basis of these results, presently a questionnaire of human values is developed that will comprise about 150 value descriptive nouns. In the present study we want to construct norms for the new questionnaire by instructing a public opinion research institute to administer it to a representative sample (n 1000) of the Austrian population. Then the validity of the instrument is to be assessed by testing a total of 10 hypotheses in three steps. First the instrument is to be compared with 8 previous methods to assess human values (n = 80 participants), second we want to assess whether the instrument can distinguish between a total of 6 groups (n = 30 in each group) representing typical exponents of human values, third we want to test whether human values can predict coping capability within a group (n = 25) of trauma victims. Additionally semi-structured interviews are to be conducted in order to understand value orientations on a qualitative level. As this test of human values will be based on an exhaustive taxonomy that was developed empirically we claim that it will be more comprehensive than previous ones and that it will possibly be culture specific for German speaking countries. The instrument is to serve both as a research instrument and as a diagnostic tool in social psychology, sociology, and political science as well as in clinical and health psychology.

The newly developed "Austrian Value Questionnaire" (AVQ), which consists of five scales (Intellectualism, Harmony, Religiosity, Materialism and Conservatism) and 13 subscales, was examined with respect to its statistical properties. The aim was to assess, if the questionnaire would be able to measure what it is expected to measure ("validity"), to find out, how reliable these measurements are ("reliability"), and to determine, to what degree certain groups of values are advocated or declined by different parts of the population ("standardization"). Four steps towards assessing validity were taken: (1) the AVQ was administered by a public opinion research institute together with an established value questionnaire and measures of religious, political, and health related attitudes to a close to representative sample of N = 421 respondents all over Austria in order to test hypotheses about the relationship of the AVQ and previous measures of values and attitudes; most of these hypotheses were confirmed; (2) most hypotheses about typical value orientations of six criterion groups (priests and nuns, community servants, students of psychology and economics, prisoners, and drivers fined for intoxicated driving) with N = 30 participants in each group were also confirmed; (3) the expectation, that religious people would have better resources to cope with traumatic experiences was not confirmed (N = 25); (4) by qualitative, semi-structured interviews, additional information about the criterion groups` value orientations was gathered. Altogether, encouraging evidence towards the validation of the AVQ was obtained. The reliability of the AVQ was assessed by administering it three times to an identical group of N = 142 respondents, mostly university students. Latent state- trait analysis revealed sufficient reliability; it also showed that the ratings of Religiosity and Conservatism remain highly stable over time and across situations, whereas those of the remaining value dimensions tend to be influenced by situational factors. Standardization (N = 421) showed that Harmony, Materialism and Intellectualism generally were valued higher than Religiosity and Conservatism. Women scored higher than men on Intellectualism, Harmony and Religiosity, and lower on Materialism. Young people scored higher on Materialism than older ones; the opposite was true for Religiosity. Voters for different political parties differed markedly with respect to their value orientations.