Empirical Assessment of Values and Ideologies

Procedures have been developed for assessing values and ideologies of social groups by interviews or questionnaires administered to their members. These involve content analysis of responses to standardized questions concerning traits which the subject admires in other people. Although the procedure provides only a crude measure of the presence or absence of individual subjects' values, preliminary evidence on reliability and validity indicates that it is adequate for an initial overview of the salient values within a group. The measures were used to assess the values and ideologies of three different samples, representing adult residents of a university community, students at the university, and students at a minority sect religious college. Results are interpreted in the light of common assumptions about the cultures of these groups.