Category Archives: News

The EVS community mourns the death of Dr. Olga Balakireva

It is with deep sadness that we learn that Dr. Olga Balakireva passed away after long illness. Dr Balakireva has been the Principal Investigator for Ukraine at the European Values Study and at the World Values Survey for over 25 years. Dr Balakireva has facilitated conducting the very first wave of value studies in Ukraine back in 1996 and supported implementation of both research programs in Ukraine since then. Thanks to her constant support, Ukraine has participated in WVS-EVS survey rounds in 1995-1998, 2000-2004, 2005-2008, 2011-2014 and most recently in 2017-2022.

In addition to her committment to the EVS/WVS survey programmes, Dr Balakireva was president of the Board of the Ukrainia Institute for Social Research, Director of the Center for Social Monitoring, Editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian society Magazine, Head of the Department for Monitoring Research of Socio-Economic Transformations of the Institute of Economics and Forecasting of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Dr Balakireva was an experienced researcher, a dear colleague who will be deeply missed. The EVS community expresses condolences to the family and friends.

Time for error reporting

Dear EVS Community and EVS Data User,

The EVS team is preparing another, and likely final, update to the data files of the EVS 2017 wave (which will include data from Latvia and Ukraine not previously integrated). We intend to release this in late spring 2022.

We would like to use the opportunity to document and fix any problems or errors that you may have discovered with the latest previous data release.

So, if you have come across any problems with the most recent releases, please let us know about that at evsservice@gesis.org within the next two weeks.

Statement on the armed invasion of Ukraine

The European Values Study is shocked by the Russian armed invasion of Ukraine. We include partners from all European countries, including Ukraine and Russia, in our research programme on values in Europe. We can testify to the benefits of peaceful cooperation. We are horrified by the violation of international treaties, the needless loss of Ukrainian and Russian lives, and the tragic consequences for our European homeland. We are in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and all those affected by this senseless war.

Let reason and human values prevail!

The European Values Study

Representativeness of Surveys and its Analysis

The analysis of representativeness of a data set belongs to the standard quality assurance procedures in survey research. The FORS Guide Representativeness of surveys and its analysis by Michael Ochsner, Senior Researcher at FORS and member of the Standing Group of EVS, challenges current practices of the analysis of representativity and suggests a framework to analyse the risk for representation bias taking into account different uses of data.

The Guide is freely available in Open Access nad offers valuable recommendations for researchers and survey pratictioners

Premio Gizarte Saria 2021

María Silvestre, Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the University of Deusto and member of the Executive Committee of European Values Study, has been distinguished with the Gizarte Saria Award 2021, awarded by the Basque Association of Sociology and Political Science by vote of its associates.

The award ceremony took place last Friday, December 17, 2021, at the hands of the President of the AVSP, Pepe Oleaga, who in his speech valued the professional and personal qualities of the researcher, as well as her dedication to the Association.

Congratulations!

On December 17, the AVSP-ESZPE presented the Gizarte Saria 2021 award to María Silvestre (Spanish)

CESSDA’s Podcast on EVS data

CESSDA’s podcast series offers an episode dedicated to the Eutopean Values Study data, available also throught the CESSDA Catalogue.

The CESSDA podcast series explores the important world of data archiving and sharing and our researchers across disciplines and countries are benefitting from the CESSDA Data Catalogue. This CESSDA podcast zooms in on the role of the European Values Study in sociology, political science and civil society, with insights from Prof. Ruud Luijkx, Tilburg University and Chair of the Methodology Study. The European Values Studies is a repeated, large-scale, cross-section survey research programme yielding insights into the ideas, beliefs, attitudes, preferences, values and opinions of citizens all over Europe.

Prof. Luijkx highlights evolving values in Europe since the early 1980s in what can be described as a “silent revolution” across the generations bringing implicit changes in attitudes and ideas. The European Values Study is an ideal starting point for understanding differences between the surveyed countries at any point in time, with researchers sharing more detailed information in publications. The datasets from the combined World and European Values Studies are a joint asset in the CESSDA Data Catalogue, which gives researchers direct access to all this insightful data without having to navigate across all the archives.

Enjoy the podcast!

Values and Identities – a policymaker’s guide

The Joint Research Center (JRC) published in November 2021 the report “Values and Identities – a policymaker’s guide“.

This report presents the state-of-the-art scientific knowledge on Values and Identities from an interdisciplinary perspective. Values are said to be the dominating forces in life and Identities represent who we are and to whom we belong. Both shape the political landscape in democracies and have gained in importance in recent decades. The report contains important insights for policymakers to adapt their work to the challenges of our time, including a dedicated toolbox section. The scientific review and toolbox are complemented by findings from a dedicated Eurobarometer on Values and Identities commissioned for this purpose.

To develop the report, the JRC involved several scholars from different disciplines, including values scholars from the EVS: Loek Halman and Frederic Gonthier, who contributed to the panel of academics.

The JRC’s report is available here.

Source: Scharfbillig, M., Smillie, L., Mair, D., Sienkiewicz, M., Keimer, J., Pinho Dos Santos, R., Vinagreiro Alves, H., Vecchione, E. and Scheunemann, L., Values and Identities – a policymaker’s guide, EUR 30800 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2021, ISBN 978-92-76-40965-6, doi:10.2760/349527, JRC126150.

EVALUE: online webinar

On behalf of our Erasmus+ project EVALUE, we invite you to participate in the online Multiplier Event for teachers and educators on 20 November 2021, 13.00-15.00 CET.

What is EVALUE?

The European Values Atlas maps European values, specifically for use in education. The data is made accessible through the EVALUE Erasmus Plus project and has been gathered by researchers working on the European Values Study.

The project aims at facilitating values education in schools, by using data from the European Values Study, the World Values Study, and the European Social Survey.

On the website the project offers several tools, such as
(1) visualising the data in maps (with various possibilities for comparison),
(2) answering questions of the surveys according to values dimensions and visualising them in a scatterplot (with the possibility to compare one’s own point of view with classmates and various respondent groups in your own and other countries),
(3) extended and short versions of background information about values dimensions (such as migration, environment, democracy, tolerance and solidarity),
(4) various teaching materials developed in the participating countries about these topics (which have been designed according to the needs of cooperating schools and trialled by them), and
(5) a curriculum framework in order to help develop lessons with the available tools by teachers themselves.

If you want to hear more about the developed tools and would like to discuss these with teachers who already worked with the materials, we would like to invite you to register for the online International Multiplier event. It will take place on 20 November 2021 between 13:00 and 15:00 (CET).

If you would like to participate, complete the form to register for the event. Your link to join the webinar will be sent to you by email several days before the webinar.

EVS Trend File 1981-2017, Joint EVS/WVS Dataset 2017-2021, and Integrated Values Surveys 1981-2021 – Out Now!

The EVS trend files are constructed from the five EVS waves and cover almost 40 years. In altogether 159 surveys more than 223.000 respondents from 49 countries/regions were interviewed.


The Joint EVS/WVS Dataset includes the joint items that define the Common Core of the EVS and WVS questionnaires. In altogether 86 surveys more than 135.000 respondents from 81 countries/regions were interviewed.


The Integrated Values Surveys (IVS) dataset 1981-2021 can be constructed by merging the EVS Trend File 1981-2017 (doi:10.4232/1.13736) and the WVS 1981-2021 Trend File doi:10.14281/18241.15. It is based on the Common EVS/WVS Dictionary (2021) and includes 450 surveys from 115 countries/territories. For more information, please visit the EVS website.

The data and documentation are accessible through the GESIS data catalogue at GESIS- Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences.

The EVS community mourns the death of Ronald Inglehart

We received with great sadness the message that Ronald Inglehart died on May 8, 2021. With Ron’s passing, the scientific community has lost a distinguished scholar who put values research on the global map.  He contributed enormously to research on social, political and cultural change in contemporary society; the whole scientific community is indebted to him.

Ron Inglehart is best known as the founding father of the World Values Survey, a worldwide network of values researchers that organizes surveys to empirically investigate values and value change in countries around the world. This initiative originated in the European Values Study, which conducted surveys to explore value change in Europe. Ron Inglehart was introduced to EVS by Jacques-René Rabier, who had started the Eurobarometer and collaborated with Ron on that project. Ron was particularly interested in questions about political values, the role of the economy and attitudes towards the quality of life.

To further test his ‘Silent Revolution’ theory, Ron also needed data from less developed countries, which motivated him to start the World Values Survey in the early 1990s. Researchers in many nations all over the world collaborated in conducting repeated surveys among representative samples in their countries, resulting in an impressive dataset covering more than 100 societies around the globe. Using this international dataset, he demonstrated that value patterns are determined to a large extent by the degree of existential security in a society, but also that historical and cultural heritage produces path dependence in value change.

Over the years, the two values projects worked together in defining items for the questionnaires and integrating datasets for wider use. The scientific community owes Ron a great deal, both for his analytical and theoretical productivity and for his unflagging commitment to collecting data from around the world. He carried out, and enabled others to conduct, invaluable comparative studies on basic human values.

All of us will feel Ron’s absence as a great loss. We will miss him in our discussions of value change, and we will particularly miss his collaboration in collecting data for the scientific studies that he did so much to promote.

Our deep and sincere condolences go to his family and friends.

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