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.

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.

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.