U.S. participation in the 8th wave of the World Values Survey

This award supports the participation of the United States in the eighth wave of the World Values Survey (WVS). The WVS was initiated in 1981 with substantial leadership from the United States and with support from the National Science Foundation. Over the last 40 years, the seven waves of the WVS have become the only source of data on mass values and attitudes from countries containing the majority of the world’s population. WVS data make it possible to carryout cross-national analyses that (1) examine the impact of economic and technological change on people’s values, and (2) analyze the impact of individual values and beliefs on the extent to which a society has democratic values. It continues to be a major source of information in public debates about the state of human values in the world. The U.S. data for the WVS is collected by AmeriSpeak, a service of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. A total of 2,500 adults are asked the same set of questions used in the more than 90 countries participating in the eighth wave of the WVS. Individuals are selected for the survey randomly and are offered the choice of completing an online questionnaire or being interviewed by phone, in either English or Spanish. A U.S. data file is constructed by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan and deposited in the WVS international archive in Spain. This data archive is available to scholars and students throughout the world without charge. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.