Values survey: the specificity of different approaches

The relevance of the study is due to the global transformation of values in society in recent years. With changing eras some values disappear and new ones appear. Stable values with the change of epochs change their semantic content. One must keep track of these changes. The most popular methods of studying values are standardized, rigid methods, e.g., a technique of social psychologist M. Rokeach. It is based on respondents' direct ranking two lists of values: terminal and instrumental (each list includes 18 values). This technique is universal. It is assumed that all the 36 values in it are common to all cultures and all social groups. We insist on the fact that different ages, different socio-political periods in the country are characterized by different values for different social and status groups. We believe that a research tool / method is necessary and possible to help researchers move closer to an adequate understanding of the values that guide people, and senses people make by various judgments. We propose the method of open questions for studying value orientations. We repeatedly tried and tested the method is as follows. Respondents were asked to write ten personally significant social values in their own words. The second part of the task was to explain the meaning of each item. In addition, it was proposed to quantitatively assess each of the written values on a scale with a maximum of 100 points. This technique, in contrast to the method of direct ranking by M. Rokeach, aims to identify the subjective value preferences of respondents, not to measure the attitudes to the values on the same list for all categories of respondents. The study by this method shows significant differences in the value sets, even in a homogeneous group of respondents. This method gives a survey of "nominal" judgment: only short, or a little more detailed names of different categories (in our case - personal values). Such responses have a lot of repetitions in the majority of respondents, and are generally easily divided into classes, which enables statistical processing of the responses and, at the same time, studying the specifics of different groups' ideas. Thus, this method has advantages in both qualitative and quantitative strategies.

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