Human values and trust in institutions across countries: a multilevel test of Schwartz's hypothesis of structural equivalence

Abstract

"The goal of this article was to show how structural equation modeling associated to multilevel regressions represents a powerful tool to examine innovative cross-cultural research questions. The relationship between values and trust in institutions was investigated in four cross-cultural datasets: three were students and teacher samples; the last was a general sample from the 2005 World Values Survey (WVS). The hypothesis of equivalence of the structure of relations between values and trust in institutions (sinusoid curve hypothesis) was tested with a series of multilevel multiple indicators and multiple causes models with random slopes. Structural equivalence was confirmed for student samples, but not for the general sample. The between-country variance of the relationship between values and trust in the general sample was partially explained by country level differences in socio-economic wealth and quality of governance." (author's abstract)