Conferences

The European Values Study (EVS) is a unique research project into Europe’s basic values. It now spans a period of almost 30 years with surveys in 1981 (13 countries), in 1990 (31 countries), in 1999 (33 countries), and in 2008 (45 countries). The survey has gradually expanded from mostly Western European countries in 1981 to the whole of Europe in 2008. The 2008 European Values Study is conducted in all European countries with a population over 100,000: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Great-Britain, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Republic of Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine. It is expected that the fieldwork will be in almost all countries will be finished in the summer of 2009.
The 2008-questionnaire is to a large extent a replication of the earlier questionnaires. Even though several items have been changed in the consecutive waves, EVS still includes an impressive number of unchanged questions. The questionnaires pertain to a very broad spectrum of life domains: family and marriage, economics, work, leisure, politics, religion, morality. This allows to introduce domain-specific and overarching concepts and to examine the relationships between basic values and attitudes in different fields. Given the long time span, the European Values Study is a unique database for longitudinal values research.

The 2008-wave was improved in many ways. Substantively, replication was guiding, but all questions were evaluated and adapted where necessary; the set of background variables (also of social origin and partners) was elaborated. The translation process was controlled by using a web-based translation programme (WEBTRANS). The sample size was enlarged to at least 1500 cases and a strict random sampling was used in all countries.