The WVSA is delighted to present this year’s Ronald F. Inglehart Honorary Lecture award to Robert Mattes, Professor of Government and Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, UK. A leading expert on democratic attitudes, Robert Mattes spoke on “Anti-Democratic Parties and Popular Support for Democracy.” The lecture examined how such parties shape citizens’ views on democratic governance.

Join us for the WVS webinar on June 18, where our guest speaker, Francesco Rigoli from City St Georges, University of London, examines ideological extremism and polarization on a global scale, across the different countries of the world. He identifies how certain national characteristics, such as levels of modernization, influence the degree of polarization in various domains like economics, gender equality, and immigration. The findings reveal that polarization is often higher in less modernized countries, though in some issues, more modernized societies show deeper divides.

Join us for the WVS webinar on April 25, where our guest speakers, Jan Aart Scholte from Leiden University and Soetkin Verhaegen from Maastricht University, will explore the elite-citizen gap in confidence toward international organizations using data from the World Values Survey and a parallel elite survey. Their analysis across five countries shows that elites express significantly higher confidence than the general public, with individual-level factors such as socioeconomic status, political values, and institutional trust helping to explain this gap. The presentation offers insights into how legitimacy is perceived differently across societal groups and what this means for the future of global governance.

Join us for the WVS webinar on April 08, where our guest speaker, Ursula Hoffmann-Lange from the University of Bamberg, Germany will examine the global development of democracy since the 1990s, using survey data from 89 countries that participated in the World Values Survey (WVS) and the European Values Study (EVS) to analyze political support across different regime types and world regions. The study finds that while global democratic quality has declined since the mid-2000s, the decline has been less severe than suggested by Freedom House and V-Dem, as it is largely concentrated in a few populous countries, while democracy has remained stable when all countries are weighted equally.

Join us for the WVS webinar on March 25, where our guest speaker, Anneli Kaasa examines the challenge posed by the abundance of cultural models that define values, attitudes, beliefs, and norms across countries and regions, noting that while many models exist, their differences can be more confusing than helpful. Through empirical analyses using WVS data, the author explores how modern cultural models—such as Inglehart’s, Minkov’s revision of Hofstede’s, and Schwartz’s—are essentially rotations of each other, capturing the same cultural elements but grouping them differently. Ultimately, the research finds that by systematically merging these models, it becomes possible to create a framework that allows researchers to better relate various cultural dimensions, enhancing the ability to compare and generalize findings across disciplines.

Join us for the WVS webinar on April 29, where our guest speaker, Yunsoo Lee from the School of Political Science and Public Administration, Shandong University, China, will explore the relationship between personality traits and trust in government, recognizing that individual differences shape perceptions of governmental institutions. Using Chinese survey data from the World Values Survey, the study examines how specific personality traits influence trust in different branches of government. The findings reveal that extraversion is negatively associated with overall government trust, agreeableness is positively linked to it, and neuroticism correlates positively with trust in courts and the police, highlighting the nuanced ways personality shapes political attitudes.

Join us for the WVS webinar on May 20, where our guest speaker, Xavier Javines Bilon from the University Philiipines Diliman, will explore predictors of homonegativity in Southeast Asia using World Values Survey (WVS) data, identifying four value-based and one demographic factor that consistently influence attitudes across six countries. The study finds that endorsements of equality, choice, and agnosticism are linked to lower homonegativity, while relativism and older age are associated with higher homonegativity, highlighting both a shared emancipative logic in the region and the need for contextually sensitive models to better understand and address sexual prejudice in different cultural contexts.

The Ronald F. Inglehart Best Book Award on Political Culture and Values is awarded for a book which makes a substantial and original contribution to theory and/or empirical studies in comparative cross-cultural research. This prize is awarded every second year and honors the best book published in the previous five years following the tradition established by Ronald F. Inglehart. The work must be a published scientific monograph by one or more authors. Priority will be given to books that examine cross-cultural differences using cross-sectional and/or longitudinal public opinion survey data. Self-nominations and nominations from publishers are accepted. Nominations acceptance for 2025 award is open till September 30, 2025.

The ongoing 8th wave of the WVS, launched in 2024, addresses global issues such as political trust, climate change, and social tolerance, while also contributing to the monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals. Researchers are invited to join as Principal Investigators, particularly in underrepresented regions like Central America, Sub-Saharan Africa, South-East Asia, and the Middle East. PIs will play a key role in overseeing national surveys, raising funds, and ensuring methodological standards, with the opportunity to access data early and include up to 40 country-specific questions. This is an invaluable chance to shape global discourse and contribute to a deeper understanding of societal values in diverse regions.

In the framework of the ongoing cooperation between the European Values Study and the World Values Survey Association, a joint session on value research is proposed at the 11th Conference of the European Survey Research Association, that will be held in Utrecht, the Netherlands on 14-18 July, 2025. Abstracts up to 300 words can be submitted via the ESRA conference management system before the deadline of December 20, 2024.