World Values Test

The World Values Survey and the European Values Study are two long-running research programmes that put the same questions to national samples in countries around the world. Their seventh round ran from 2017 to 2022. Political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel used these surveys to describe two broad dimensions on which countries differ. One runs from traditional values, where religion, family duty and work come first, to secular values. The other runs from survival values, which put order and security first, to self-expression values, which put tolerance, equality between men and women and having a say first.

This test asks 21 questions from the seventh round of the survey, with their original wording and answer options. They cover six areas: religion, personal choice (abortion, divorce and euthanasia), work, tolerance and trust, gender equality, and having a say. Each area is scored from 0 to 100. Three of the areas make up your position between traditional and secular values, and the other three your position between survival and self-expression values.

The country figures are averages. For every question, we took the answers of each country's sample in the 2017 to 2022 round, as published by Our World in Data from the Integrated Values Surveys, and scored them the same way as yours. Your match with a country is 100 minus the typical gap between your six scores and that country's six averages. A match of 90% means that your scores sit about 10 points from that country's averages.

A country's average hides a great deal of variety. People inside any one country differ from each other far more than the country averages differ from one another, so your closest match will often be a country you have never lived in, and that tells you nothing about where you belong. The comparison isn't a judgement of you or of any country. No position on the map is better or worse than another, and a low match only means that your answers are far from that country's average answers.

The figures have limits. Countries were surveyed in different years between 2017 and 2022, and values change. The questions were asked in many languages, face to face in most countries, while you are answering alone on a screen. Six countries were not asked one or two of the questions, and their averages for those were estimated from their other answers in the same area. The two dimensions here are built from 21 questions; the published Inglehart-Welzel cultural map uses a different statistical procedure and will not match this one exactly.

This test is for education and reflection. It is not a psychological assessment, and it isn't affiliated with the World Values Survey Association or the European Values Study.

References

• Haerpfer, C., Inglehart, R., Moreno, A., Welzel, C., Kizilova, K., Diez-Medrano, J., Lagos, M., Norris, P., Ponarin, E., & Puranen, B. (Eds.). (2022). World Values Survey Trend File (1981-2022) Cross-National Data-Set. JD Systems Institute & WVSA Secretariat. https://doi.org/10.14281/18241.27
• EVS. (2022). EVS Trend File 1981-2017 (ZA7503; Version 3.0.0). GESIS Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.4232/1.14021
• Our World in Data. (2025). Integrated Values Surveys [Data set, processed from the EVS and WVS trend files]. https://ourworldindata.org
• Inglehart, R., & Baker, W. E. (2000). Modernization, cultural change, and the persistence of traditional values. American Sociological Review, 65(1), 19-51. https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240006500103
• Atari, M., Xue, M. J., Park, P. S., Blasi, D. E., & Henrich, J. (2023). Which humans? PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5b26t
• Jackson, J. C., & Medvedev, D. (2024). Worldwide divergence of values. Nature Communications, 15, 2650. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-46581-5

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