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Wednesday 19th July, 11:00 - 12:30 Room: F2 109

The Study of Value Change Using European Values Surveys 2
Chair	Professor Hermann Duelmer (University of Cologne )
Coordinator 1	Professor Ruud Luijkx (Tilburg University)
Coordinator 2	Dr Malina Voicu (GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Cologne)

Session Details

Various surveys carried out during the last decades provide a large amount of information about values and attitudes shared by people living in various countries around the globe. European Values Study was the pioneer of the surveys on values, collecting data every nine years, since 1981 and having an extensive geographical coverage in Europe. EVS still includes an impressive number of unchanged questions since 1981 allowing overtime comparisons on values related to a very broad spectrum of life domains: family and marriage, economics, work, leisure, politics, religion, morality. Other surveys, such as World Values Survey, International Social Survey Program, complement EVS in terms of geographical coverage and provide information about values and attitudes of people living not only in Europe but also in other regions of the world.
This session focuses on the analysis of value change under the impact of contextual factors and encourages submissions that make use of the comparative potential of surveys on values and attitudes from a methodological and a substantive perspective. To give a few examples: What is the impact of recent political events on attitudes and values? What are the basic empirical findings on long-term change and what are the main cross national differences? Which are the best methods to investigate overtime changes in values and attitudes? How to combine data coming from different surveys to study overtime trends? Do the measurement instruments that have been used in these surveys guarantee comparability across time and space?
Submissions making use of comparative surveys data like European Values Study, World Values Survey, International Social Survey Program, European Social Survey or Eurobarometer are welcome.

Paper Details

1. The Measurement Instruments of Japanese Religiosity from a Comparative Perspective: Data Analysis of the WVS 6th Wave
Professor Kazufumi Manabe (Aoyama Gakuin University)

Do the “measures, indices and scales” of religiosity developed in the Western societies have more or less the same reliability in Japanese society? I try to answer this question by conducting a data analysis of the World Values Survey (WVS) 6th wave.

I start the data analysis with a “descriptive analysis”. To put it concretely, I create and examine the “frequency distribution tables” for 20 question items regarding the Japanese religiosity. I propose an idea of geometrical portrayal of the positive response rates to the question items concerning Japanese religiosity. That is a method of piling up each question item in accordance with the size of % of the positive response, and finally drawing a shape of pyramid. Based on the examination of this pyramid shape, I have narrowed down the question items to be studied to six.

The six question items are as follows:
V9 How important is religion in your life?
V139 Do you belong to a religion or religious denomination?
V140 About how often do you attend religious services these days?
V141 About How often do you pray?
V142 Would you say you are a religious person?
V147 How important is God in your life?

At the next stage of survey data analysis, I focus on a “structural analysis” of these six question items regarding the Japanese religiosity. What kinds of statistical methods can be used to conduct a “structural analysis”? The statistical methods used for such data analysis are “correlation matrix”, “factor analysis” and “Cronbach’s ”.

The results of these data analyses show that six question items asked in the WVS can construct a “measure, index and scale” of Japanese religiosity, and it can be used for the cross-national comparison with the Western societies.

2. Dynamics of Social Change using Comparative Survey Data – a Polish Example
Professor Jerzy Bartkowski (Warsaw University)

The paper discusses mutual comparability of main comparative survey data: European Values Study, World Values Survey, International Social Survey Program, European Social Survey and Eurobarometer using the Polish case. The discussed question what are the indicators of similarity and completion. The surveys have not only similar questions, but also specific questions. Some of them were held in the same time, but also in different period of social or political history. The similar questions can be used for mutual checking of the surveys. For the same time period they should bring the same or very close results. Yet the similarity of the surveys can be also defined in broader sense as the expression of the same social process i.e. secularization. This allow us to use specific questions from the other survey as a source of information. The same question is with the extension of the time series. This problem can be summarized that comparability and completion of the surveys should use not only the strict methodological criteria with discussion of wording or sampling. The another important factor is potential to include the results of the survey dynamics in the broader social and political context.