Thursday, August 30, 2007

World values

World Values Survey

The World Values Survey consists of an organisation formed by sociologists from more than 80 universities world wide. Their tasks constists on studying the values, beliefs, the habits of the different countries, societes and cultures that form the planet. Go to their website, is highly recommende. Among other studies, you can find the Inglehart-Welzel Cutural Map of the World. It is really interesting to see how the different countries and cultures correlate with the variables.

The first interesting conclusion is that there's two variables, that explain the major differences among the different societies. Variable one, Traditional/Secular-rational values, reflects the contrast between societies in which religion is very important and those in which it is not. Variable two, the transition from industrial society to post-industrial societies-which brings a polarization between Survival and Self-expression values.

Very interesting to see where countries such as the US are, close to the traditional religios than to the secular/rational one.

Anyway, this is all based on a survey, so some of you may think potentially there's plenty of mistakes. In any case, I believe is a good exercise and detinitely food for though.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

I´ve being using this resource to figure "country" positionings. At least it helps to offer a point of discussion.
Antonio Monerris