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• Family security;
• Freedom;
• Happiness;
• Inner harmony;
• Mature love;
• National security;
• Pleasure;
• Salvation;
• Self-respect;
• Social recognition;
• True friendship;
• Wisdom.
A shorter and more easily implemented instrument is the List of Values (LOV),
suggested by Kahle (1983), including only nine values. Another important scale
for assessing value systems was developed by Schwartz and Bilsky (1990) and
later modified by Schwartz (1992) (see Struch et al. [2002: 27] for the complete
inventory developed by Schwartz, comprising 56 values).
Now, values are of particular interest because values may affect a wide spec-
trum of behaviour across many situations (Seligman et al., 1996). Indeed, indi-
viduals’ value priorities are part of their basic worldviews (Struch et al., 2002:
16). Therefore, values are also important lifestyle determinants. As Gunter and
Furnham (1992: 70) point out: ‘Lifestyles are defined as patterns in which people
live and spend their time and money. They are primarily functions of consumers’
values.’ Solomon (1994: 621) even defines lifestyle as an exhibited ‘set of shared
values’. Moreover, values are broader in scope than attitudes or the types of vari-
ables contained in AIO measures. They transcend specific situations (Grunert-
Beckmann and Askegaard, 1997: 164). Finally, value inventories in general often
only contain a handful of values, instead of 200 or 300 AIO items.
This led researchers of the second wave of lifestyle research to use value bat-
teries as input for their questionnaires, which proved to be much more elegant
and fundamental than the AIO approach.
Now, looking at the most often used inventory, the one developed by Rokeach,
one must say that this inventory cannot go without considerable criticism
(although one cannot doubt the importance of Rokeach as a scientist of values).
First, there is the supposed universality of these values. As Ness and Stith
(1984: 235) point out: ‘It can be concluded that the Rokeach values are basically
American middle-class values.’ Second, and more importantly, there is a lack
of a strong theoretical and/or empirical base underpinning his inventories.
Rokeach combined a literature study, the ideas of some 30 psychology students
and the values as reported by some 100 adult respondents living in Lansing
(Michigan) and to whom was explained what values are. This suggests that intu-
ition played a far more important role than theory or empirical research in con-
structing the value inventory. The random character of his inventory was clearly
illustrated by Jones et al. (1978), who found that the Rokeach values hardly rep-
resent one-third of the values people spontaneously put forward in empirical
research.