Revision and Cross-cultural Adaptation of the Human Values Scale for Self-completion Modes

Abstract

Since its first round, the European Social Survey (ESS) has included a 21-item measure of ten basic human values shared across cultures, known as the Human Values Scale (HVS), developed by Shalom H. Schwartz. Recently, the scale has been revised to a new 20-item HVS with shorter, simpler items (usually only one sentence instead of two sentences per item in the past version) and introducing a single gender-neutral version. This latter change is crucial as the ESS transitions to a self-completion mode using online and paper questionnaires. To ensure consistent measurement across countries and languages, the ESS included the new scale in its ESS Round 12 Advance Translation, creating a detailed list of annotations to clarify the source items’ meanings. The new HVS has also been fielded in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) in 2025, including a refugee sample. A multilingual cognitive interview pretest assessed the consistency of interpretations among respondents with diverse migration backgrounds. Findings from the ESS translation efforts and the SOEP cognitive interview pretest were instrumental in refining the final version of the new HVS. This note provides an overview of the revised HVS and addresses the challenges of cross-cultural adaptation.