Definition
Plain language
A decades-long global survey of people's beliefs and values, used to measure how culturally far apart countries are.
As stated in the literature
A long-running cross-national survey of social, political, and cultural values, often distilled into validated measures of cultural distance between countries used as ground truth in comparative studies.
Also called: WVS
Why it matters: It gives studies a real-world yardstick for how culturally similar or distant groups are, instead of relying on guesses or stereotypes.
For example, researchers can use it to show that two neighboring countries hold surprisingly different attitudes toward family, religion, or authority.
Heard on the show
“The World Values Survey — a decades-long global survey of beliefs and values, boiled down into a validated measure of how culturally far apart two countries are.”Episode 209 — How 2.6 Billion Doodles Exposed the Culture Words Quietly Delete