ABSTRACT
The enquiry into values has thus attempted to establish a solid foundation and has been helped enormously by increased access to attitude data. The release of huge quantities of survey data in various forms – Eurobarometers, World Values Surveys and national election surveys – has allowed social science to ask many more questions about the citizen's attitudes as well as developing elaborate new techniques for answering these questions with more refined tools of analysis. Empirical value research faces certain methodological stumbling blocks, which are not easily resolved. They include problems concerning the following questions: Is the enquiry into value-orientations a value-neutral enterprise epistemologically? Is a value-orientation a real entity in people's minds, as it not only describes behaviour but also causes behaviour? Are certain value-orientations more important than others? If a value-orientation is a micro phenomenon, then can they also be macro causes? The enquiry into value-orientations tends to use quantitative methods as a response to the abundantly available data about attitudes.
