Multiple interpretations of the rokeach value survey

It is suggested that the popularity of the Rokeach Value Survey is undeserved and that the apparent independence of each value being measured is a consequence of the fact that the survey measures each value quite badly. For each of the 18 terminal values on the Rokeach Value Survey, various interpretations were suggested to 71 subjects, who indicated which interpretations represented their thoughts when they were completing the survey. There were a variety of interpretations. When a factor analysis of the correlations among all the interpretations of each value was carried out, all but one value had more than one significant factor (dimension of meaning), and two major factors accounted for 41% of the variance of all the interpretations. These results indicate that the Rokeach Value Survey is not a good measure of the relative desirability of different values, and they support the view that people's evaluations of the world may be based on more fundamental values.