World Values Survey: the possibilities and limitations in analyzing the consolidation potential of a territory

The article examines issues related to the possibilities and limitations that arise when using the World Val-ues Survey methodology to analyze the consolidation potential of territorial communities. The importance of changing values is associated with the transformation processes characteristic of modern society and po-tentially increasing the heterogeneity of cultural and value models of various social communities. The em-pirical basis of the article is domestic studies devoted to the analysis of the results obtained in various waves of the World Values Survey as well as the tools and databases compiled based on the results of the 5th, 6th, and 7th waves of this study, which made it possible to assess the inter-item correlation and the degree of consistency of the obtained scales. The conducted analysis of the literature identified a number of problems with the possibility of comparing data obtained in various socio-cultural conditions. These limitations are determined by the discordance between the interpretation and content of values within different cultures, as well as differences in connotations caused by historical and political contexts. When comparing the results at the level of Russian society, researchers note the presence of individual discrepancies caused by the het-erogeneity of the social structure. However, to a greater extent, these discrepancies are explained by the generational structure, with a weakly expressed or absent influence of social-class division. One of the im-portant characteristics noted both in the literature review and during the analysis of the data array is the weak expression of institutional trust and low possibility of its application for analysis at the level of regions and territorial communities. In addition, the paper notes the difficulties in using the methodology for study-ing values, associated with their complex structure, with the heterogeneity of the scales proposed for their measurement as well as with a weak correlation between values and trust. The authors make a conclusion about the advisability of using the Schwartz method for assessing value orientations to increase the reliabil-ity of the study.