This fourth wave of the European Values Study covers all countries of Europe, from Iceland to Azerbaijan and from Portugal to Norway, with a population of 100,000 and more. In total, the fieldwork is administered in 46 countries:
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, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia Republic, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, The Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine.
In each country, a random sample was drawn and 1,500 persons were interviewed personally (face-to-face interviews). Almost 70,000 Europeans participated in the European Values Study 2008. This fourth wave has a persistent focus on a broad range of values. Questions with respect to family, work, religious, political and societal values are highly comparable with those in earlier waves (1981, 1990 and 1999). This longitudinal scope of the study offers opportunities to explore trends in time. The data cover a whole generation: almost 30 years. Respondents answered about 250 questions; on average, it took about 70 minutes to complete an interview.
Large efforts were taken to guarantee high scientific quality standards of the survey. First, all existing questions were critically reviewed by a theory group which also proposed new questions and items to be added to the questionnaire. This group also made sure that all questions were standardized between waves and between countries. A serious improvement is the rich set of socio-demographic background variables which was added to the questionnaire, facilitating far reaching analyses of the determinants of values. The council of National Program Directors critically reviewed this process and approved the final master questionnaire. In addition, the translation process, fieldwork procedures and data processing were standardized according to strict guidelines developed by a Methodology Group. More information about these procedures, click here. The National Program Directors were responsible for the fieldwork in their country. Coordination of the fieldwork was done by EVS at Tilburg University,
CEPS/Instead ,
and GESIS.
Due to the high quality standards, data collection was very costly: almost 6 million Euros. For an overview of the sponsors of the 2008 European Values Study, click here.