ABSTRACT
Conducting research on values is a highly contested endeavor. Positivistic scholars, such as Herbert Simon within public administration, argue that constructs such as “motives” and “values” are not scientifically researchable at all (Rutgers 2004, 27). Others mention the problem of “reification” in researching values—regarding or treating an abstraction as if it had concrete or material existence—or point at the enormous disagreements on the exact meaning and usage of the construct “value” (Posner and Schmidt 1986; Van der Wal et al. 2006). Disagreement on meaning and usage, of course, can be applied to many concepts within the social sciences, such as “culture,” “democracy,” and “power.” The first two problems, however, specifically concern values and give birth to many questions about the content and nature of the concept and, moreover, on its “researchability.”
