World Values Survey (WVS)

The World Values Survey (WVS) explores values and beliefs, cultural stability or change over time and the impact of values on social and political development in different societies around the world. It was established in 1981 and it has become one of the most widely-used and authoritative cross-national and time-series surveys.

The WVS consists of nationally representative surveys conducted in almost 100 countries which contain almost 90 percent of the world’s population, using a common questionnaire. The WVS is the largest non-commercial, cross-national, time series investigation of human beliefs and values ever executed, currently including interviews with almost 400,000 respondents. Moreover the WVS is the only academic study covering the full range of global variations, from very poor to very rich countries, in all of the world’s major cultural zones.

Datasets are available through the ADA’s World Values Survey Dataverse.