• Proper Use of the Schwartz Value Survey

A number of things need to be communicated or else you are liable to obtain distorted results. To assure obtaining useful, comparable data and results, please contact crossculturalcentre@yahoo.com for consultation on design and analysis of studies using the SVS. Help will be available for dealing with each of the following:

1. It is critical to clean data collected before doing analyses. There are standard criteria used to drop respondents who have not tried to discriminate among their values, who have skipped too many items, or who have responded in ways suggesting deliberate misrepresentation.

2. Individual differences in use of the response scale must be controlled when doing analyses. This is ordinarily done by using the individual’s mean rating of all value items as a covariate. There are specific instructions for doing this.

3. In order to assess the extent to which items have their expected meanings, it is desirable to do a structural analysis within each sample. This also reveals the structure of relations among the ten values and clarifies whether there are problems in using the standard a priori indexes for group comparisons. Help in conducting these analyses and/or instructions on how to obtain the statistical package to do it will also be available.

4. When the analysis planned is group level rather than individual level, researchers need to correct for scale use differences among groups. There are standard procedures for doing this.

5. It is often not clear whether the appropriate analysis for a researcher’s purposes is to use the ten individual level values or the seven culture level value orientations. The SVS can be used for both purposes, but the analyses differ. If there is a glimmer of doubt, consultation is desirable.

Prof. Shalom H. Schwartz

• Possible Areas of Research

• Data collection and summarisation comparing SVS responses for one or more culture(s), comparing results to similar studies of the culture.
• Comparing two or more cultures
• Relating values to other traits
• Language of administration comparisons
• Paired comparisons administering the SVS to the same subjects in different languages with a time lapse.
• Matched samples of different subjects.

• Project Descriptions:

IAACP Budapest 2003

Symposium Presentation Submission Form

Title of Presentation:

The Event Management Questionnaire: An Individual-Level Validation Study with International Business Students

Names and Affiliations:

Catherine Q.E. Sim, Alliant International University, USA

Norbert K. Tanzer, University of Graz, Austria

Abstract:

In a recent country-level study, Smith, Peterson, Schwartz et al.(2002) surveyed the extent to which national managers in 53 countries relied upon eight sources of alternative guidance (e.g., unwritten rules) to give meaning to eight specific work events (e.g., introducing new work procedures). By correlating the national averages of these eight sources with the Hofstede, Trompenaars, and Schwartz value dimensions, they confirmed that the Schwartz and Trompenaars value measures can predict cultural differences in the handling of specific work events. The present study aimed to replicate their findings in an individual-level analysis with a nationally diverse sample of international business students. Four hundred and eighty-eight MBA students with previous work experience (22 to 54 years; 68% man, 32% women; 32% North Americans, 30% Asians, 18% Latin American, 8% Western Europeans, and 12% from other world regions) enrolled in a U.S. business school participated in this study. They completed the English language version of the Events Management Questionnaire together with the Portraits Questionnaire (PQ), a new and less abstract method to measure the ten Schwartz culture-value dimensions. An MDS analysis revealed substantial differences in the reliance upon the different sources. amongst the MBA students from Anglo-American, Latin-American, and Asian background. The individual-level data analysis further confirmed the convergent (across events) and divergent (across sources) validity of the Events Management Questionnaire. Thus, the instrument may provide valuable diagnostic information for international human resources development (e.g., selection and training of global managers).

Preferred presentation type:

Symposium Contribution

Audiovisual requirements:

Keywords:

Event Management Questionnaire; Schwartz Portraits Questionnaire (PQ); Validation Study; Business Students

First (Presenting) Author:

Name: Catherine Q.E. Sim

Institutional Affiliation: Alliant International University

Complete Postal Mailing Address: Alliant International University, CSOS-LA
1000 S. Fremont Ave., # 5, Alhambra, CA 91803

Country: USA

E-Mail: csim@alliant.edu

Office Telephone: (+1-626) 284-2777 ext. 3551
Fax: (+1-626) 284-0550
Co-Author(s):

#1 Name: Norbert K. Tanzer

Institutional Affiliation: University of Graz, Austria

New Zealand: Romie Littrell: A study of Caucasian New Zealanders (Pakeha), Maori, Pacific Islanders, Chinese, and Indian ethnic groups; the SVS will be employed along with Hofstede’s cultural trait survey, Hofstede’s business goals survey, and the LBDQ XII to define ethnic cultures, to study the dynamics of economic interaction. romielittrell@yahoo.com

Leadership Behaviour Across Cultures: Romie Littrell: Using local language versions of the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire XII

China: Romie Littrell: Data collection using SVS in various regions of The Peoples’ Republic of China.