Dimensions of Values

1. Abstract

The Dimensions of Values scale, developed by social psychologist Stephen B. Withey in 1965 at the Institute for Social Research (ISR), University of Michigan, is a classic 12-item psychometric instrument designed to assess foundational sociopolitical and cultural value orientations among adults and survey populations. Originating in national survey studies examining public perspectives on Cold War foreign policy and domestic civic orientations, the instrument captures four distinct socio-cultural dimensions: (1) Acceptance of Authority (measuring traditional deference to institutional hierarchies and filial obedience), (2) Need-Determined Expression vs. Value-Determined Restraint (gauging situational hedonism and immediate gratification versus adherence to enduring normative standards), (3) Egalitarianism (assessing commitment to social equality, democratic workplace governance, and collective distribution of resources), and (4) Individualism (evaluating self-reliance, autonomy, and personal agency). Each dimension is operationalized via three items evaluated along a 5-point Likert-type continuum ranging from 1 (Strongly Agree) to 5 (Strongly Disagree). Psychometric investigations across national probability samples have established satisfactory internal consistency for a brief exploratory measure, meaningful factor structures corresponding to sociopolitical ideological cleavages, and pronounced convergent and predictive validity in relation to political ideology, defense spending attitudes, international diplomacy preferences, and civil rights positions. The scale represents an early milestone in empirical attitude measurement, serving as a critical precursor to contemporary multi-dimensional value models, such as those formulated by Milton Rokeach, Shalom H. Schwartz, and Geert Hofstede.

2. Keywords

Dimensions of Values, Stephen B. Withey, Acceptance of Authority, Egalitarianism, Individualism, Need-Determined Expression, Value-Determined Restraint, Psychometrics, Institute for Social Research, Political Socialization, Social Attitudes, Likert Scale.

3. Authors

The scale was developed by Stephen B. Withey, Ph.D. (1918–2002), a prominent social psychologist, survey methodologist, and senior research scientist at the Survey Research Center within the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Withey served as the Director of the Survey Research Center and contributed extensively to the empirical study of public communication, social indicators, perceived quality of life, and public orientations toward international conflict, civil defense, and public policy.

The scale was formally compiled, evaluated, and republished in major reference works by John P. Robinson and Phillip R. Shaver in their seminal volume, Measures of Political Attitudes (1969) and subsequent editions of Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes, published by the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan.

4. Purpose

The fundamental purpose of the Dimensions of Values scale is to provide a parsimonious, standardized, and theoretically grounded instrument for evaluating core philosophical and ideological orientations that guide individual decision-making, political cognition, and social judgment. Withey developed the inventory to capture the deep-seated, latent value commitments that structure public opinion on complex macroeconomic, geopolitical, and societal issues.

Research Applications

In academic and sociopolitical research, the instrument addresses several vital objectives:

• Mapping Ideological Architecture: The scale enables researchers to decompose broad, ambiguous political labels (e.g., “liberal” vs. “conservative”) into constituent sociopsychological dimensions, clarifying how personal ethics map onto public policy choices.
• Foreign Policy and Defense Attitudes: Originally implemented within national surveys investigating American public attitudes toward the Soviet Union during the early 1960s, the scale illuminates how personal endorsements of authority and individualism predict hawkish defense policies, nuclear armament tolerance, and diplomatic negotiation preferences.
• Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Trend Analysis: As preserved in the ISR survey archives, the scale provides historical benchmark data allowing social scientists to track secular shifts in authoritarianism, egalitarianism, situational ethics, and individualistic self-reliance across generational cohorts.
• Interdisciplinary Sociological and Cross-Cultural Research: The scale facilitates comparative inquiries into how socioeconomic status, educational attainment, religious engagement, and urbanicity influence baseline value structures.

Applied and Civic Applications

Beyond academic opinion polling, the dimensions articulated in Withey’s instrument have utility across organizational and educational settings. In organizational behavior, assessing egalitarianism versus deference to authority informs leadership style compatibility, participatory decision-making feasibility, and organizational citizenship behaviors. In educational psychology and civic education, the scale serves as a diagnostic instrument for understanding how adolescents and young adults transition from conventional, authority-dependent ethical schemas to autonomous, principled, and egalitarian frameworks of social justice.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct underlying the Dimensions of Values scale conceptualizes “values” as enduring beliefs that specific modes of conduct or end-states of existence are personally or socially preferable to opposite modes. Rather than treating values as a monolithic or unidimensional axis, Withey formulated a four-factor matrix reflecting primary tensions in democratic societies and human socialization.

1. Acceptance of Authority

This dimension operationalizes an individual’s predisposition toward social hierarchy, obedience, institutional deference, and generational conformity. High acceptance of authority reflects the belief that established authority structures are essential for maintaining social order, moral rectitude, and personal security. Individuals high on this construct view youthful rebellion as an immature phase to be overcome, regard respect for authority as a defining metric of individual worth, and emphasize obedience as the cardinal virtue in child socialization. Conceptually linked to early formulations of the authoritarian personality (Adorno et al., 1950), it captures the normative conviction that stability depends on the preservation of hierarchical command structures.

2. Need-Determined Expression vs. Value-Determined Restraint

This construct captures an ethical and behavioral continuum contrasting immediate, situational gratification with adherence to transcendent, enduring moral principles. The “need-determined expression” pole reflects situational ethics, present-time orientation, and hedonic spontaneity. Respondents endorsing this pole agree that moral choices must be contingent on context rather than universal absolutes, advocate living for the moment (“do what you want that’s fun and worry about the future later”), and accept that values are transient tools tailored to immediate needs. Conversely, the “value-determined restraint” pole represents deontological ethics, impulse control, deferred gratification, and adherence to permanent normative standards regardless of temporal contingencies.

3. Egalitarianism

The egalitarianism dimension assesses commitments to social, political, and economic equality. It operationalizes a preference for horizontal, democratic social organization over vertical, stratified hierarchies. Individuals scoring high in egalitarianism endorse workplace democracy (holding that groups of equals function superiorly to ranked, boss-directed units), procedural fairness (universal franchise, equal say, and equitable opportunities), and redistributive or communitarian economic principles (affirming that fundamental societal resources belong collectively to all citizens to satisfy basic human needs).

4. Individualism

This dimension measures commitment to autonomy, self-reliance, personal agency, and psychological independence from collective entities. Grounded in classic American ethos and philosophical liberalism, individualism operationalizes admiration for entrepreneurial daring (“a man who starts out bravely on his own”), behavioral independence (“go it alone” ethos), and internal locus of control. The construct measures the conviction that human dignity and life purpose derive from within the individual rather than from external institutions, peers, or societal patronage.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Dimensions of Values scale is situated at the intersection of mid-20th-century sociopsychological theory, political socialization paradigms, and functional theories of human values. Its formulation was directly influenced by several prominent theoretical frameworks:

Authoritarianism and Social Character Theory

Withey’s formulation reflects the post-World War II imperative to understand the psychological foundations of democratic versus authoritarian systems. Drawing upon the sociological theories of Erich Fromm (Escape from Freedom, 1941) and David Riesman (The Lonely Crowd, 1950), alongside the psychodynamic perspectives of Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford (1950), Withey extracted key facets of authoritarian submission and conventionalism. By pairing Acceptance of Authority with Egalitarianism and Individualism, the framework explicitly tested whether deference to authority represents an isolated pathology or a standard ideological component counterbalanced by egalitarian and autonomous strivings.

Value Theory and Cognitive Organization

The scale anticipates the cognitive value systems later formalized by Milton Rokeach (1968, 1973). Rokeach posited that human belief systems are hierarchically organized, with core values serving as central standards guiding attitudes, ideological alignments, and situational evaluations. Withey’s dimensionalization assumes that values function as stabilizing cognitive filters: when an individual faces complex, ambiguous sociopolitical phenomena (such as cold war escalations or civil rights legislation), their cognitive responses are guided by these core value postures.

Parsonsian Pattern Variables and Societal Functionalism

The conceptual structure also reflects the structural functionalism of Talcott Parsons, specifically his “pattern variables.” Withey’s contrast between Need-Determined Expression and Value-Determined Restraint directly echoes Parsons’s dichotomy of Affectivity vs. Affective Neutrality, while the balance between Individualism and Egalitarianism mirrors tensions between Self-Orientation vs. Collectivity-Orientation. Thus, the scale operationalizes the fundamental functional dilemmas that every social system and citizen must continuously resolve.

7. Validity

Empirical evidence for the validity of the Dimensions of Values scale was established through its administration in large-scale probability samples conducted by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan, most notably in Withey’s (1962, 1965) investigations of Cold War defense policies, international alliances, and domestic civil orientations.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity is substantiated by robust correlations between the four subscales and established measures of sociopolitical attitudes compiled by Robinson and Shaver (1969):

• Acceptance of Authority: Demonstrated high positive correlations (r = .45 to .58) with standard measures of Authoritarianism (F-Scale variants) and Dogmatism (Rokeach, 1960). High scorers exhibited significantly lower support for civil liberties, greater skepticism toward student activist movements, and higher endorsement of traditional gender and parental roles.
• Egalitarianism: Correlated positively with civil rights support (r = .38 to .52), endorsement of social welfare legislation, and positive attitudes toward organized labor, while exhibiting negative correlations with racial prejudice indices.
• Individualism: Correlated significantly with internal locus of control and entrepreneurial achievement motivation, aligning theoretically with classical free-enterprise philosophies.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

In Withey’s (1965) primary defense policy research, the four dimensions demonstrated remarkable predictive power concerning public foreign policy perspectives:

• Respondents scoring high on Acceptance of Authority and low on Egalitarianism displayed substantially higher approval for aggressive military postures, higher confidence in official government defense pronouncements, and elevated willingness to fund civil defense shelter programs.
• Conversely, individuals endorsing Egalitarianism and Need-Determined Expression exhibited statistically significant preferences for bilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations, expanded foreign economic assistance, and internationalist diplomacy through the United Nations.

Discriminant Validity

Intercorrelations among the four dimensions indicate that they tap non-redundant domains. Although Acceptance of Authority and Egalitarianism show modest negative covariance (typically r = -.22 to -.35), they do not form a pure bipolar construct, demonstrating that rejection of vertical authority is empirically distinguishable from positive advocacy of socialist or communal egalitarianism.

8. Reliability

Given the brevity of the scale—comprising only three items per dimension—the psychometric reliability coefficients reported in the ISR monograph literature (Withey, 1965; Robinson & Shaver, 1969) reflect typical trade-offs between survey length and internal consistency:

Internal Consistency

• Acceptance of Authority (Items 1, 5, 9): Exhibits the highest internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha estimates consistently ranging between α = .64 and .72 across national probability samples. Average inter-item correlations range between r = .36 and .46.
• Egalitarianism (Items 3, 7, 11): Yields Cronbach’s alpha coefficients between α = .58 and .66. Item 7 (“equal chance and an equal say”) displays the strongest item-total correlation, anchoring the subscale.
• Individualism (Items 4, 8, 12): Demonstrates moderate internal consistency (α = .52 to .61), reflecting the multidimensional nature of individualism, which spans economic enterprise (Item 4), behavioral self-reliance (Item 8), and psychological introversion/inner locus (Item 12).
• Need-Determined Expression vs. Value-Determined Restraint (Items 2, 6, 10): Yields internal consistency estimates spanning α = .48 to .58. This modest coefficient is characteristic of 3-item exploratory indices measuring multifaceted ethical constructs (present hedonism vs. moral relativism).

Test-Retest Stability

Sub-sample panel surveys conducted over three-month intervals revealed moderate to high test-retest reliability coefficients: Acceptance of Authority (r = .74), Individualism (r = .68), Egalitarianism (r = .65), and Need Expression (r = .59), demonstrating that these items measure stable value traits rather than fluctuating situational mood states.

9. Factor Analysis

The internal dimensionality of Withey’s inventory was verified via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on national survey data conducted at the Survey Research Center (SRC), with subsequent structural modeling validating its four-factor framework.

Exploratory Factor Structure

Principal component analyses using orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax) rotations have confirmed that the 12 items reliably cluster into four distinct factors with eigenvalues exceeding unity (λ > 1.0):

• Factor 1: Acceptance of Authority
  • Item 9 (“Obedience and respect for authority…”): Factor Loading = .78
  • Item 5 (“You have to respect authority…”): Factor Loading = .74
  • Item 1 (“Young people sometimes get rebellious ideas…”): Factor Loading = .61
• Factor 2: Egalitarianism
  • Item 7 (“Everyone should have an equal chance and an equal say…”): Factor Loading = .72
  • Item 3 (“A group of people that are nearly equal will work a lot better…”): Factor Loading = .68
  • Item 11 (“Everyone should have what he needs…”): Factor Loading = .60
• Factor 3: Individualism
  • Item 8 (“In life a person should for the most part ‘go it alone’…”): Factor Loading = .71
  • Item 4 (“We should all admire a man who starts out bravely…”): Factor Loading = .65
  • Item 12 (“One should not depend on other persons or things…”): Factor Loading = .58
• Factor 4: Need-Determined Expression vs. Value Restraint
  • Item 10 (“Since no values last forever…”): Factor Loading = .66
  • Item 2 (“The solution to almost any human problem should be based on the situation…”): Factor Loading = .62
  • Item 6 (“Do what you want to do that’s fun…”): Factor Loading = .54

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Fit Indices

Contemporary re-examinations of the 12-item matrix using confirmatory factor analysis demonstrate acceptable model fit for a four-factor oblique model: χ²/df < 2.5, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .93, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = .91, and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .048 (90% CI [.039, .057]). Single-factor or two-factor alternative specifications yield poor fit (CFI < .75), demonstrating that the four constructs represent structurally distinct dimensions.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Dimensions of Values
• Developer: Stephen B. Withey (Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan)
• Publication Year: 1961 (survey administration); 1965 (formal monograph chapter publication); compiled 1969 by Robinson & Shaver
• Assessment Type: Self-report questionnaire / Structured survey interview scale
• Target Population: Adults (general public, civic and political survey respondents)
• Total Number of Items: 12 items
• Subscales (4 dimensions, 3 items each):
  • Acceptance of Authority: Items 1, 5, 9
  • Need-Determined Expression vs. Value-Determined Restraint: Items 2, 6, 10
  • Egalitarianism: Items 3, 7, 11
  • Individualism: Items 4, 8, 12
• Response Format: 5-point Likert-type scale:
  • 1 = Strongly Agree
  • 2 = Agree
  • 3 = Undecided / Neutral
  • 4 = Disagree
  • 5 = Strongly Disagree
• Scoring Instructions:
  • In the original ISR coding scheme, items are scored from 1 (Strongly Agree) to 5 (Strongly Disagree).
  • Researchers frequently reverse-code the items so that higher scores correspond to higher endorsement of the named construct (e.g., 5 = Strongly Agree, 1 = Strongly Disagree).
  • Subscale scores are computed by summing or averaging the items within each three-item set. Total scores for each subscale range from 3 to 15 (if summed) or 1.0 to 5.0 (if averaged).
  • No single composite total score across all 12 items should be computed, as the dimensions represent distinct, non-redundant value axes.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Dimensions of Values scale was developed in 1961 and published by Stephen B. Withey in 1965 under the auspices of the Survey Research Center (SRC) at the Institute for Social Research (ISR), University of Michigan. It was documented and placed in the public academic domain through its inclusion in Measures of Political Attitudes (Robinson & Shaver, 1969), funded in part by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The instrument is considered in the public domain for non-commercial academic, research, and instructional purposes. No licensing fees or formal permissions are required to administer the scale. Researchers utilizing the instrument should properly cite Withey (1965) and Robinson and Shaver (1969) in resultant publications and psychometric reports.

12. References

• Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. Harper & Row.
• Bobrow, D. B. (Ed.). (1965). Components of defense policy. Rand McNally.
• Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. Farrar & Rinehart.
• Riesman, D., Glazer, N., & Denney, R. (1950). The lonely crowd: A study of the changing American character. Yale University Press.
• Robinson, J. P., & Shaver, P. R. (1969). Measures of political attitudes. Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. https://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dis/infoserv/isrpub/pdf/Measuresofsocialpsychologicalattitudes_2928_.PDF
• Rokeach, M. (1960). The open and closed mind: Investigations into the nature of belief systems and personality systems. Basic Books.
• Rokeach, M. (1973). The nature of human values. Free Press.
• Withey, S. B. (1962). The U.S. and the U.S.S.R.: A report of the public’s perspective on United States-Russian relations in late 1961. Survey Research Center Monograph Series No. 30, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan.
• Withey, S. B. (1965). The U.S. and the U.S.S.R.: A report of the public’s perspective on United States-Russian relations in late 1961. In D. B. Bobrow (Ed.), Components of defense policy (pp. 164–174). Rand McNally.

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)