Answer:
mean level comparisons across countries might be difficult due to item-responding differences.
Explanation:
Values, abstract guiding principles, have gained a lot of attention, not just within psychology, but also in neighboring fields such as sociology, economics, philosophy, and political science (Schwartz, 1992; Gouveia, 2013; Maio, 2016). In the last three decades, researchers have asked people to rate diverse values in terms of their importance as guiding principles in their lives. Analyses of these ratings have taught us that the structure of human values is very similar across more than 80 countries (Schwartz, 1992; Bilsky et al., 2011; Schwartz et al., 2012). That is, the same values have been grouped together in most countries, resulting in the view that values within a cluster are motivationally compatible. More specifically, in the predominant value model (Schwartz, 1992) 10 value types are distinguished: power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, conformity, and security. The 10 value types can be combined into four higher order value types, which form the endpoints of two orthogonal dimensions: openness values vs. conservation values, and self-transcendence values vs. self-enhancement values. Adjacent value types are motivationally compatible and hence positively correlated, whereas opposing value types are expected to be motivationally incompatible and negatively related.
