Talk:World Values Survey

Reception and criticism section? It doesn't exist.
Why? Where did it go? All articles should include criticism, both from those outside the authorship, and importantly, by the author's themselves. This is called objectivity, its the hallmark of rational discourse and science. We present our findings, then we discuss openly all of the ways that we could be wrong or that our own biases might be polluting the results. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Randall Lee Reetz (talk • contribs) 20:40, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Absolutely. Swedish researchers concluding that the world needs to get its act together and act more like Sweden shouldn't be taken seriously at all. An article that repeatedly deletes its criticism section is even worse.


 * You put this section at the wrong end of the comments, though. — Llywelyn II   01:38, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Reception and criticism
I don't think the "Reception and criticism" part makes any sense at all for several reasons. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.241.235.108 (talk • 69.241.235.108) 10 July 2006.
 * Then on 26 July 2006, contribs removed the said section, which had read:
 * The Dutch intercultural researcher Geert Hofstede positively receives the WVS results. Referring specifically to Inglehart's two-dimensional reduction of his results as represented by the Inglehart Map, Hofstede claims that it supports his own work. "Inglehart's key cultural dimensions were significantly correlated with [my] dimensions. Well-being versus survival correlated strongly with individualism and masculinity; secular-rational versus traditional authority correlated negatively with power distance." However, Inglehart's two dimensions are not identical to Hofstede's five dimensions. Given the differences in methodology (Hofstede's research came from work values surveys given to IBM employees) it is unsurprising that there are differences between his results and those of the World Values Survey.


 * The reason given in the edit summary was: Removed irrelevant comment about work by Ron Inglehart based on the WVS, comment was not about the WVS itself and thus was off-topic.


 * It seems to me that the above paragraph could have been better written. But to say it is off-topic is a bit harsh.  It's closely related to the Inglehart Map, which the article says is one of the "most well-known results of the WVS survey".  Given that someone has gone to the trouble of finding this reference and providing the information about Hofstede's partial validation of the Inglehart Map, it doesn't seem appropriate for this material to be removed from Wikipedia altogether.  Could it go somewhere else, e.g. in Post-materialism?  Would 69.241.235.108 like to specify what the "several reasons" for objecting were?  -- JimR 03:52, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm sure I could have written it better - edits are welcome. But it was carefully researched, so it's strange to remove it completely. I don't like the way an anonymous user removed it - might be someone with an axe to grind. I'm reinserting it. If there is serious objection to it, please use the talk page and don't be anonymous. BTW, I don't personally agree with Hofstede at all; I was just trying to reflect important literary comment. Caravaca 10:04, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I removed it because it is not about the WVS, plain and simple, it is about work derived from the WVS. There are dozens and dozens of papers that use the WVS data (I have co-authored one), should there be comments about all of them on the WVS page? It should go on a page about Inglehart's cultural map. That someone "has gone to the trouble of finding this reference" is completely irrelevant for its inclusion on this page. Finding a reference is not sufficient validation for posting something to Wikipedia. Maybe if I write a paragraph about my paper and cite it nicely it can stay here? No! There is so much that could be said about the WVS, the different variables used, the changes in wave 4, the lead investigators in each country, differences in the questions asked in each country, and other things. Since there is a section on findings, and a part there that mentions Inglehart's map work, the comment about the map should be subsumed under that section, but the map is not the survey. As the Wikipedia page correctly poins out, the first part of the first wave of the WVS did not even involve Inglehart, it was done as the European Values Survey. An axe to grind, I find that amusing. I don't know Hofstede, I don't  know his work, and I've never met Inglehart although I did work at ISR when I was a PhD student. I sent him an email once about the 5th wave, but he never replied. I made it clear that the comment was not about the WVS, and it isn't, it's about Inglehart's map, which is different. The way the page was before gives such short shrift to everyone who has worked so hard collecting the data, translating the questions appropriately into so many different languages and cultural contexts, and organizing the data for analysis (I am not one of those people, nor do I know any). Yes, Inglehart is the current lead, but don't make the page about him or the work that he has done with data from the WVS. You can give him his own page, and give his map work its own page (the map is pretty cool, imho). If you want to have criticism of the WVS, that's fine. But this is criticism of work derived from the WVS, and that is a vastly different thing. Who I am is irrelevant, all that matters is my point: the comment is not about the WVS, so does not belong on the page (unless it is subsumed under the map subsection which is under the results section -- currently it is not). What is your reason for reinserting it? Just because you didn't like that I removed it? That is also not an appropriate reason to have anything in a Wikipedia entry. I can tell you that my name is Nathaniel Poor, and that I have a PhD from UM, and you can look me up online and email me to actually verify that, but none of that changes my point that the comment is not about the WVS. 20 March, 2007.
 * Nathan, I'm glad to hear you are a published author and PhD holder. As you have these abilities, please also take the trouble to find out about getting a username and signing your name with ~ as this raises your wiki-credibility to match your real world credibility. As regards your deletion of this paragraph, please find out what an edit war is. The appropriate Wikipedian way forward here would be for you, as an expert in the field, to start a new article/subsection on literature deriving from the WVS. Caravaca 06:48, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I'm not glad to hear he's a published author and PhD holder since he's obviously so incompetent at basic data analysis. (This is WP:AGF that it's not just self-serving intellectual dishonesty, which—of course—we should assume.) A discussion about the axes the study claims are the proper ways to understand its raw data is not only on topic but essential to discussion of the topic. — Llywelyn II   01:48, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I've returned the deleted section, as there are definitely more Wikipedians in favour of retaining it than deleting it (at least 2 versus 1 at the moment). However I have also added an expert tag and changed the wording slightly. An expert in the field would perhaps like to expand the section to be more representative of literature deriving from the WVS. Expansion would be better than deletion. Caravaca 06:54, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Geographical illiteracy
How can it be that in this map Uraguay is placed in Catholic Europe and Portugal in Latin America? How can something like that be published? Gravydog 14:02, 29 March 2007 (UTC)gravydog
 * GravyDog, you don't understand the map, and the map is not the WVS so shouldn't be discussed on this page. It's cultural groupings, not geographic. They then attempt to fit geography (mostly) onto culture, given the measures from the survey. See http://margaux.grandvinum.se/SebTest/wvs/articles/folder_published/article_base_54.
 * I agree with Gravydog. Take a look at Greece for instance: value-wise it is placed amidst Catholic Europe but the author was careful enough to surround it with the appropriate colour for Protestant countries. The same should have been done for Portugal. I suggest that the article mention this geographical fact error. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.135.165.160 (talk) 19:51, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Obvious bias
"Secretariat in Sweden Stockholm" and Sweden is on the upper right corner of the map. Doesn't that say all? 80.226.24.8 (talk) 18:02, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Section on "Literature derived from the WVS"
I've removed this section: there is a very large body of research using WVS data, and there is no particular reason to discuss Hofstede's instead of, say, Veenhoven's. I'm not convinced a section like this is useful or possible. But I'm happy to hear other views. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 11:08, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The other view is that blanking content is almost never helpful and generally in service to pushing agendas. — Llywelyn II   01:38, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

No original research
I removed the criticism section which didn't provide verifiable sources.
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability

Wikipedia does not publish the personal opinions of Wikipedians, only material from reliable, third-party sources.
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research

"All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles and all editors."

If the criticisms expressed toward Inglehart's research fall under the "significant views that have been published by reliable sources", then you may please revert this change.
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.105.201.227 (talk) 18:38, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Inglehart Map
It's buggy. X-axis scale goes from -2 to -2, should of course be -2 to 2 ;) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.3.43.72 (talk) 09:22, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

The map
There are serious flaws in the map. Uruguay is in catholic Europe and Portugal is in Latin America!!--Knight1993 (talk) 21:20, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
 * That is what happens with these kinds of clustering and "labelling". The clusters are named after cultural geography, but the actual clustering analysis shows that Uruguay is closer to catholic European countries than anything else, wile Portugal closely resembles values of Argentia, Chile and Dominican Republic and is, in that regard, closer to Latin America than Europe. I.e. the map follows the results first, geographical labels patched on later, and those possibly slightly off. Arnoutf (talk) 21:35, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh I see. Thanks for explaining that--Knight1993 (talk) 03:13, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Elaborate and simplify
As the WVS work expands with its current 5th wave, I think it would be useful to review the texts in the different sections throughout the page. At the moment, some sections are quite difficult to understand if you are not familiar with the WVS work. (For example, see confusion in a discussion from 2007-2008 about the global cultural map). It can therefore be beneficial to simplify and concretize adding new examples and work with more references. I will make some suggested changes and am happy to hear the community’s comments and views. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Valuesresearch (talk • contribs) 16:10, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Splitting off Inglehart–Welzel Cultural Map
I think this topic has separate notability. It needs to be referenced and split off. I found the following good refs:,. around p.100-103 seems highly useful, too, and there's probably more useful content in GBooks/Scholar. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 06:09, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
 * That doesn't involve cutting out the visual for the survey data. It still goes here. — Llywelyn II   01:38, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Edits by Christian Welzel?
User:Chriswelzel has added much content here, see. It is possible that this might be the scholar Christian Welzel? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:28, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I completely agree with your concern, and have tagged the article accordingly. The autobiographical articles Christian Welzel and Ronald Inglehart show similar issues. Unfortunately this complex topic will need a professional academic to look into the issue. I have trimmed some of the most blatant spam, but of course this and other related articles need a lot more work. A few topic-relevant standard works of those authors could be included in a short list of selected "Further reading" entries. GermanJoe (talk) 17:29, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately these COI-related problems still persist: neutrality and undue weight due to a completely unbalanced focus on the project's own views, and the overreliance on primary and closely related sources. I have therefore restored the valid COI-tag. GermanJoe (talk) 04:13, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Regarding the recent removals
Re: by User:GermanJoe. I am fine with removal of unreferenced content, but some of the findings from section "Catalogue of findings" were referenced, and while they should be rewritten from trivia-like bullet point format, I think they are nonetheless valuable and should be restored. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 05:51, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking another look. While the entire section is referenced to works of the main researchers (detailed usage of "other" sources is in short supply in this article), the information itself is probably useful as summary. I have restored it as suggested along with the required references, and toned down a few more instances of self-praise for this survey. GermanJoe (talk) 10:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Facilitation for objective discussion
The WVS website mentions methodology but one can not find such anywhere in the website. For this webpage to be objective, it is important to know the methodology/framework for their work (i.e. survey); otherwise we will be subject to interpretations. Such facilitation will enable the appropriate objectivity of this page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:334C:4FF0:E1FE:D24B:B362:B317 (talk) 16:00, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yup. — Llywelyn II   01:38, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

WVS and copying from Wikipedia
In February, I got around to trying to contact WVS team about their extensive and long term copying of content from Wikipedia to their site and back, without any proper attribution. As I received no reply for a month, I can only assume they are not interested in discussing their less-than-best practices here. I am posting my unanswered email to them for future reference. Maybe someone else will have better luck, or maybe a different future WVS team will care more about this. Email was sent to bi.puranen@worldvaluessurvey.org and christian.welzel@uni.leuphana.de --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:26, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Dear Bi, Chris and anyone to whom this is forwarded


 * I have noticed that your page at http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp appears to have been copied from Wikipedia article on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Values_Survey


 * I was actually meaning to write to you for about it for years, as I have been one of the Wikipedia volunteers involved in developing this page (as part of ASA/ISA endorsed WikiProject Sociology, among other initiatives, aiming to improve the worlds' populace knowledge of sociology through improving the coverage of this topic of the website that the public visits, i.e. Wikiepdia). I would be happy to help you begin a proper collaboration with Wikipedia. It is indeed a great site to use to promote public knowledge, and it is great that WVS staff and researchers have been using it, but this needs to be done in a proper way. I do appreciate that the WVS team has found it so well written you have copied it to your website. Some of it, of course, has been written by your team in the first place (ex. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=World_Values_Survey&type=revision&diff=429683665&oldid=429531532- added by Chriswelzel, whom I presume was Chris Welzel), so the term copied is not particularly precise. Indeed, this confusion is a root of several problems.


 * First, while Wikipedia license does allow for free copying of its content, it also requires that you properly attribute this content. You should cite it (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CiteThisPage&page=World_Values_Survey&id=763444639) and note this content is available under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license. Proper attribution is important, since otherwise we risk being accused of plagiarism and/or copyright violation, even when trying to educate the public in good faith. See also related Wikipedia policies under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Donating_copyrighted_materials and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights . Wikipedia will (sooner or later) remove content whose attribution or copyright is not clear. In addition to copyright problems, reusing Wikipedia content without proper attribution can lead to circular reporting, aka citogenesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_incidents).


 * An example of problems this can lead is explained by a colleague of mine, who has investigated it then and posted her analysis (originally it was suspected that someone has copied content from your website to Wikipedia without permission and that it would have to be removed):
 * I was asked to look into whether this page copied Wikipedia or the other way around by a person who quite correctly noted that the history of the site suggests Wikipedia published content before they did. See also this 2011 archive. The earliest archive of the specific page in question dates to August 2014. That's good evidence that they may have copied from Wikipedia. Here's the clincher for me - from the current page (archived today), "Much of the variation in human values between societies boils down to two broad dimensions: a first dimension of “traditional vs. secular-rational values” and a second dimension of “survival vs. self-expression values.”[5]" That [5] is the first footnote on that page. Clicking on it takes you directly to [1]. There's no doubt that they copied from Wikipedia, right down to the footnotes. I think there's a strong possibility that the content was developed on Wikipedia by the subject itself. The particular passage that led to the request that I look at this was added to Wikipedia in May 2011], by this guy, whose username originally was "Valuesresearch" (now Dancouf). In that case, if they copied only their own material, their use of the content without attribution would not be a copyright issue, but it can cause confusion as to who owns what.


 * Second things to remember is that Wikipedia cannot be used as a publisher of original data (see more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research). Wikipedia can only publish information that has been published elsewhere. That's why when writing the Wikipedia article on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglehart%E2%80%93Welzel_cultural_map_of_the_world (which was written by me in 90%) I relied on https://web.archive.org/web/20131019112321/http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs/articles/folder_published/article_base_54 since,that article of yours was signed Ronald Inglehart & Chris Welzel. Note that I was unable to copy directly from you (copypaste) as that would be a copyright violation (since your website does not use a free license like Creative Commons). Parts of the content that your team has added c. 2011 was removed from Wikipedia in 2015 by another volunteer, due to it being uncited, and thus, original research. Ironically, some of this content still remains on your website, which means that some content that Wikipedia has deemed as unreliable / unverifiable still remains on your site. That content, of course, is likely good since it was presumably written by your team, but since you published it first on Wikipedia, it was removed, as Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought (since it is an encyclopedia, i.e. a tertiary source). I and another volunteer from sociology project have spent some hours trying to preserve some of it, primarily by reading Inglehart et al. works and citing it to them. It all would have been much easier, saving time and effort of myself and yours, if this was done in the proper way, which would be as follows: 1) you publish content on your website under Creative Commons license, preferably signing it with the names of researchers who wrote as was done at https://web.archive.org/web/20131019112321/http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs/articles/folder_published/article_base_54 for example. 2) You copy this content to Wikipedia, clearly attributing it your site and your researchers. The way this is done currently (your site is using Wikipedia content without attribution) is nearly the complete opposite of good practices. I hope we can correct it.


 * I also noticed that just recently, someone using account "Patternicity" added a new map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Inglehart-Welzel_2015.jpg You can see that the uploader chose the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license. That's great! But the file also links to the copy of the image on your website, and your website does not mention the said license.,This inconsistency can lead to the map being deleted from Wikipedia, since a zealous volunteer from our copyright cleanup may conclude that this map was "stolen" by someone from your website and uploaded to Wikipedia without permission (since the uploader, Patternicity, has not made any declaration that they are a member of your team). If you could add a note of the license to your website, it would solve all issues. Otherwise you will have to email Wikipedia ,copyright team (I can provide you the email) and confirm to them that the copyright owner (the person who created the map) indeed agrees to the Creative Commons license.,,On a related note, I wonder if you will make the dataset for that map available on the web? The one for your prior maps was available on your website, but it seems it was removed a while ago (fortunately it remains archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20131019112321/http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs/articles/folder_published/article_base_54). It would be great if you could publish datasets for each of your maps (we have a partial (?) gallery at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Inglehart%E2%80%93Welzel_cultural_map_of_the_world).


 * I would guess that WVS does not have any full time salaried staff in charge of maintaining the website, but if anything is unclear, I would be more than happy to work with whomever is in charge of this (I expect that at worst, some graduate students from your team can be assigned to straighten this up). I hope Wikipedia and the WVS team can start proper collaboration on 2017, that will avoid any copyright problems, and utilize our limited resources efficiently to promote WVS and educate the world about it through Wikipedia.


 * No idea what you're even trying to talk about. Wikipedia exists to be referenced and directly copied without worries re: copyright. That's its entire reason to exist. What did you think it was? — Llywelyn II   01:38, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @LlywelynII I have no idea how you can miss that. People reusing our content without acknowledging the source are violating our reuse policy, see WP:REUSE, as well as WP:CITOGENESIS. Also, please double-check your edits to this talk page, you've made some errors like messing up the heading directly below. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:18, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Reread everything you just sent at me. xD


 * says that it's their job to figure out how to apply the relevent licenses. One license is reuse with attribution. Honestly, you might be somewhat right. It's not stated at all clearly but it seems like they'd like all of the text to be under reuse with attribution instead of just some of the images. On the other hand, look at Litigation involving the Wikimedia Foundation. None of them involve actually suing anyone for failure to credit the volunteer editors for the free content they've made. (Also the actual GNUFDL doesn't seem to require attribution at a cursory glance. The Reuse page says it should but it also notes that Wiki ain't legal advice and that any actual legal obligations are from the actual licenses. I might be missing it though.)


 * isn't a policy. It is a list of instances of screwing up, which is about us avoiding the problem, not an obligation on anyone else.


 * They're ignoring you. Everyone will ignore you. And they're right to do so. You poking them for attribution doesn't retroactively put anything under an actual attribution license. It's just you wasting your time and being annoyed for no good reason. If the text is under an attribution license—which again isn't actually clearly stated on the linked pages so it's not helpful to link them to anyone yet—then they'll respond when you have your lawyer write them with clearly stated and legally valid damages you're expecting to receive if they fail to respond to you in a timely fashion. Wikipedia itself doesn't seem to have actually sued anyone over attribution, despite—as you've noticed—there being thousands of instances of low hanging fruit there. (Then again, maybe the litigation page is just as badly handled as the reuse one and it's just unclear.) — Llywelyn II   03:13, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @LlywelynII I really don't get what you are trying to say here. Yes, many websites (organizations, people) copy from Wikipedia without proper attribution, which is a copyright violations (and some people would call it stealing or plagiarism). And yes, we do not sue people for that. But we can point it out, to educate them in the long run. I've identified a case of backwards copying from Wikipedia, presented the result of my analysis and attempt to communicate here, and moved on years ago. The page is also tagged with backwardscopy, and this is important because on occasions what has happened is that someone copies from Wikipedia, a Wikipedia editor claims we are violating their copyright copying from them, and removes our original content. The above documentation/analysis also serves to ensure this won't heppen here. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 03:03, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Eh, if that's all you were trying to accomplish, then yeah good on ya and thanks for your effort. — Llywelyn II   05:05, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Not sure how that title got messed up. Must've been a keyboard glitch or something. Fixed but lemme know if I missed anything elsewhere. — Llywelyn II   03:16, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Happiness and life satisfaction update from the latest report?
Now this chapter reads for example "The WVS has shown that from 1981 to 2007 happiness rose in 45 of the 52 countries for which long-term data are available." The WVSurvey is now in it's wave 7 = "mid-2017 and following a 1-year postponement due to the Covid-pandemic, was finally closed on December 31, 2021". Any new insights? Thy, SvenAERTS (talk) 07:26, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject
We have this banner. How would I go about fixing this? I guess by auditing thigns that this contributor added and contextualizing them? Tal pedia 15:57, 7 May 2023 (UTC)


 * @Talpedia Yes. Sometimes it is not a problem, sometimes it is an indication of advertising/promotion of UNDUE viewpoints/etc. It's good to double check. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 03:04, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Seriously?

 * Much of the variation in human values between societies boils down to two broad dimensions: a first dimension of “traditional vs. secular-rational values” and a second dimension of “survival vs. self-expression values.”[9]
 * On the first dimension, traditional values emphasize religiosity, national pride, respect for authority, obedience and marriage. Secular-rational values emphasize the opposite on each of these accounts.[9]

So... since this is patent nonsense—China and Japan embody the nearly paradigmatic opposite of national pride, obedience, and respect for authority and marriage?—what's actually going on here? Someone's thumb is heavily on the scale, so what is it? Just that religiosity is almost all of the mix and then they throw in other nonsense to push other unrelated points?

Similarly, this article not only badly needs its criticism section but the criticism sections (plural) have been repeatedly deleted by editors close to the subject? C'mooooon. — Llywelyn II   01:38, 30 June 2023 (UTC)