Values scales are psychological inventories used to determine the values that people endorse in their lives. They facilitate the understanding of both work and general values that individuals uphold. In addition, they assess the importance of each value in people's lives and how the individual strives toward fulfillment through work and other life roles, such as parenting. Most scales have been normalized and can therefore be used cross-culturally for vocational, marketing, and counseling purposes, yielding unbiased results. Psychologists, political scientists, economists, and others interested in defining values, use values scales to determine what people value, and to evaluate the ultimate function or purpose of values.
Development
Values scales were first developed by an international group of psychologists whose goal was to create a unique self-report instrument that measured intrinsic and extrinsic values for use in the lab and in the clinic. The psychologists called their project the Work Importance Study (WIS). The original values scale measured the following values, listed in alphabetical order: ability utilization, achievement, advancement, aesthetics, altruism, authority, autonomy, creativity, cultural identity, economic rewards, economic security, life style, personal development, physical activity, physical prowess, prestige, risk, social interaction, social relations, variety, and working conditions. Some of the listed values were intended to be inter-related, but conceptually differentiable.
Since the original Work Importance Study, several scientists have supplemented the study by creating their own scale or by deriving and improving the original format. Theorists and psychologists often study values, values scales, and the field surrounding values, otherwise known as axiology. New studies have even been published recently, updating the work in the field. Dr. Eda Gurel-Atay published an article in the Journal of Advertising Research in March 2010, providing a glimpse into how social values have changed between 1976 and 2007. The paper explained how “self-respect” has been on the upswing, while “a sense of belonging” has become less important to individuals.
Rokeach
According to social psychologist Milton Rokeach, human values are defined as “core conceptions of the desirable within every individual and society. They serve as standards or criteria to guide not only action but also judgment, choice, attitude, evaluation, argument, exhortation, rationalization, and…attribution of causality.” In his 1973 publication, Rokeach also stated that the consequences of human values would be manifested in all phenomena that social scientists might consider worth investigating. In order for any type of research to be successful, regardless of the field of study, people's underlying values needed to be understood. To allow for this, Rokeach created the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS), which has been in use for more than 30 years. It provides a theoretical perspective on the nature of values in a cognitive framework and consists of two sets of values – 18 instrumental and 18 terminal. Instrumental values are beliefs or conceptions about desirable modes of behavior that are instrumental to the attainment of desirable end points, such as honesty, responsibility, and capability. Terminal values are beliefs or conceptions about ultimate goals of existence that are worth surviving for, such as happiness, self-respect, and freedom. The value survey asks subjects to rank the values in order of importance to them. The actual directions are as follows: “Rank each value in its order of importance to you. Study the list and think of how much each value may act as a guiding principle in your life.” The Rokeach Value Survey has been criticized because people are often not able to rank each value clearly. Some values may be equally important, while some values may be equally unimportant, and so on. Presumably, people are more certain of their most extreme values (i.e. what they love and what they hate) and are not so certain of the ones “in between.” Further, C.J. Clawson and Donald E. Vinson showed that the Rokeach Value Survey omitted a number of values that a large portion of the population holds.