The European Value Study (EVS) and the World Value Survey (WVS) are two large-scale, cross-national, and repeated cross-sectional survey research programs. Together, they provide insights into the ideas, beliefs, preferences, attitudes, values and opinions of citizens from countries all over the world; concerning family, work, environment, perceptions of life, politics and society, religion, morality, and national identity. Both EVS and WVS are among the most used surveys in Comparative Sociology and Political Science.
They include a large number of questions that have been replicated since the early 1980ies, thus enabling analyses of change over four decades. To ease a joint analysis of both surveys for researchers, EVS and WVS have collaborated to create different versions of joint analysis files from their originally independent data collection efforts: A joint file of the most recent cross-sectional waves, separate trend files of their respective over-time repeated questions, and a synthetical joint trend file, called the Integrated Values Studies File (IVS, to be created by the users from a provided merge syntax after downloading the component trend files at the WVS and EVS archives).
The final releases of these files/the syntax have now been published on December 14, 2022 in parallel by the WVS data archive (JD Systems, Spain) and the EVS data archive (GESIS, Germany).
EVS/WVS Joint Dataset 2017-2022, ZA7505, v4.0.0 (2022-12-14), GESIS doi:10.4232/1.14023
The EVS/WVS Joint Dataset 2017-2022 is one core output of this cooperation. It is based on a pre-agreed common core of shared questions in both survey programs. The Joint Dataset is provided, along with comprehensive documentation, for download on both websites, EVS and WVS.
The final release (v4.0.0) of the Joint EVS/WVS Dataset includes data and documentation of 153.716 respondents across 90 countries and territories: 36 from the EVS 2017 and 64 from the WVS7. Ten of these countries (Armenia, Czechia, Germany, Great Britain, Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine) conducted surveys in both programs, EVS and WVS.
EVS Trend File 1981-2017, ZA7503, v3.0.0 (2022-12-14), doi: 10.4232/1.14021
The EVS Trend File 1981-2017 can be analysed in its own right, but it also constitutes the ‘EVS half’ of the synthetical EVS/WVS trend file. The trend is constructed from the five EVS waves (1981, 1990, 1999, 2008, 2017). Its final release accumulates the answers from more than 224.000 respondents interviewed in 160 surveys across 49 countries/regions, comprising almost 40 years.
The release comprises two data files: an anonymized scientific-use file (SUF, ZA7503) for free download and an add-on file (RUF). That Sensitive Dataset (ZA7504) is available only under contract control and contains variables on the region of the interview (NUTS-3 level and detailed size of town) and respondent’s, parents’ and partner’s occupation (ISCO 3- and 4-digits). More comprehensive documentation is available on the EVS website.
The synthetic Integrated Values Surveys trend file
Changing the approach used for previous waves, the new IVS file is now based on an updated Common EVS/WVS Variable Dictionary (2022), which comprises only those variables/questions replicated by EVS and/or WVS since 1981. Two inclusion requirements were set for a variable to appear in the IVS:
- Requirement 1: a variable has been used at least twice in the EVS or twice in the WVS.
- Requirement 2: a variable has been used at least once in EVS and once in WVS.
The jointly created EVS/WVS Merge Syntax enables users to easily merge the EVS and WVS trend data files. The resulting Integrated Values Surveys (IVS) 1981-2022 data file contains the trends of the five waves of the EVS and the seven waves of the WVS. With now 838 variables and the answers from 660.000 respondents across 118 countries, the IVS continues to be a unique source of comparative trend data.