Values sit underneath every perspective, which raises an awkward question for a science course: how do you measure something as slippery as what people care about? The answer is the value survey, and the graph you get when you run one repeatedly.
📘 What you need to know
Values are qualities or principles a person believes have worth and importance in life.
They guide behaviours, attitudes and decisions, and shape priorities and judgements.
Values are deeply personal, but cultural and social factors shape them too.
Communities and organisations hold values, visible in their policies, communication and actions.
Clashing values create tensions between individuals and between organisations.
Value surveys investigate the perspectives of social groups towards environmental issues.
Closed-ended questions give quantitative data; open-ended questions give depth but are harder to analyse.
Repeating a survey over time produces a behaviour-time graph, showing how behaviours and lifestyles change.
What values are
Values are the qualities or principles that a person believes have worth and importance in life. They guide behaviour, attitudes and decisions. Honesty, integrity, fairness and compassion are all examples.
DefinitionValues — qualities or principles a person believes have worth and importance, which guide their behaviours, attitudes and decisions.
Values affect people’s priorities, judgements, perspectives and choices. They feel deeply personal, but a range of cultural and social factors shape them. In some cultures respect for elders is highly valued, and that shapes how people interact throughout society.
Someone may say they value sustainability highly and still take the cheaper, dirtier option. That gap is a real finding, not a flaw in the survey.
Values in communities and organisations
Communities share and shape values together. They show up in how people communicate and interact, both inside the community and with others. A community that values sustainability may organise clean-up events or back green policies.
Organisations hold values too, expressed through advertising, social media, policies and decisions. A company that values diversity may have policies supporting equal opportunity in hiring.
Named examples.Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement calls for immediate action on climate change, reflecting values of sustainability and conservation. Patagonia demonstrates environmental stewardship by donating a share of profits to environmental causes.
When values clash
Different values regularly create tensions between individuals and between organisations. Conflict arises when strongly held values collide — for instance when some people want to express themselves freely while others want cultural sensitivity respected. In multicultural societies, working through those tensions takes understanding and respect for the diversity of values involved.
Value surveys
A value survey investigates the perspectives of social groups towards environmental issues. It helps you understand how environmental concerns are viewed and prioritised by individuals or communities — attitudes to renewable energy, to waste reduction, to conservation, or to using public transport instead of driving.
What makes a survey well designed
A well-designed environmental value survey should:
Take different viewpoints into account.
Capture the whole range of opinions within a group, not just the loudest.
Its results should give insight into the attitudes, beliefs and values that influence how people view and respond to local and global environmental challenges.
Closed and open questions
Closed-ended questions
Open-ended questions
What they are
Respondents pick from a fixed set of options: multiple choice, rating scales, Likert scales
Respondents answer in their own words
Strength
Responses can be given a value or score, so they suit quantitative analysis and statistics
Capture more detailed responses and deeper insight into individual viewpoints
Limitation
Can miss reasoning that falls outside the options offered
Much harder to analyse and compare
Typical closed-ended questions in an environmental survey look like this:
Which renewable energy source do you think is most effective at cutting carbon emissions? (a) solar (b) wind (c) hydroelectric (d) geothermal
How far do you agree that using public transport is an effective way to reduce air pollution? Strongly agree / Agree / Neutral / Disagree / Strongly disagree
On a scale of 1 to 5, how likely are you to recycle paper products?
Because these answers can be scored, you can run statistics on them and identify trends, correlations and patterns. If a town runs an education campaign to increase recycling, a survey gives you attitude data that can then be correlated with actual recycling rates to test whether the campaign worked.
How surveys are carried out
Surveys, questionnaires or interviews can all be used. Online survey tools are particularly useful because they let you collect data from a wider audience, in greater volume, in less time, and analyse it efficiently.
When an exam asks you to evaluate a value survey, the strongest point is usually about sampling. You cannot assume everyone in a social group has had the same experiences or faces the same challenges, so their views may differ sharply even within one community. A survey that misses that diversity gives you a confident but misleading answer.
Behaviour-time graphs
If a value survey is repeated over time, the results can be plotted as a behaviour-time graph. These show changes in behaviours or lifestyles over time, letting you visualise trends, patterns and shifts in environmental behaviour.
Three features are worth naming here: the slow early rise, the change of gradient in 2018, and the plateau near 70%.
Behaviour-time graphs can track daily habits over a set period, such as energy consumption, waste generation or transport choices — a graph might show household electricity use falling over several months after LED lights are fitted or a thermostat is adjusted. They also track wider environmental behaviours such as recycling rates, composting and water conservation.
They are valuable for monitoring progress towards sustainability goals and evaluating the effectiveness of environmental initiatives, because they let you see the impact of an intervention and identify where more work is needed.
Worked examples
WE 1
Values and behaviour
Outline what is meant by values, and explain how they influence environmental behaviour. (4 marks)
Step 1: the definition
Values are qualities or principles a person believes have worth and importance in life, such as fairness or compassion.
Step 2: what they do
They guide behaviours, attitudes and decisions, and they shape a person’s priorities and judgements.
Step 3: the environmental link
Someone who values sustainability may choose to cycle rather than drive, or pay more for a product with lower environmental impact.
Step 4: beyond the individual
Communities and organisations hold values too. Patagonia’s environmental stewardship shows in donating a share of profits to environmental causes.
Values set priorities, and priorities drive the choices people actually makea named example lifts this from generic to secure
WE 2
Designing a value survey
Suggest why closed-ended questions are often used in environmental value surveys. (3 marks)
Point 1: what they are
Closed-ended questions give respondents a fixed set of options, such as multiple choice, rating scales or Likert scales.
Point 2: the analytical advantage
Responses can be quantified, given a value or score, so statistical analysis can be applied to the data.
Point 3: what that allows
This lets researchers identify trends, correlations and patterns — for example correlating attitudes to recycling with actual recycling rates to test whether a campaign worked.
They turn opinions into numbers, and numbers can be analysedmention the trade-off: open questions give depth but are harder to analyse
WE 3
Interpreting a behaviour-time graph
Using the recycling graph, describe the trend and suggest a reason for the change after 2018. (4 marks)
Step 1: overall trend
The recycling rate rises throughout, from about 18% in 2013 to about 70% by 2025.
Step 2: the change of gradient
The rise is slow until 2018, at roughly 2.6 percentage points a year, then becomes much steeper at roughly 5.6 points a year.
Step 3: the reason
A recycling campaign was launched in 2018, which is likely to have shifted attitudes and made recycling easier or more socially expected.
Step 4: the later plateau
After about 2022 the line flattens, suggesting the households willing to change already have, and further gains are harder to achieve.
A steady rise, a sharp acceleration in 2018, then a plateau near 70%always quote figures with units, and name the turning point year
💡 Exam tips
Define values precisely: qualities or principles believed to have worth and importance.
Remember values operate at three levels: individual, community and organisation.
Have named examples ready: Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future, Patagonia.
Know the trade-off between closed and open questions, and say which suits quantitative analysis.
For survey evaluation, the strongest point is usually diversity within the group being surveyed.
When reading a behaviour-time graph, give the trend, a figure with units, and any change of gradient.
⚠ Common mistakes
Confusing values with perspectives. Values are the underlying principles; perspectives are viewpoints built on them.
Assuming a group shares one set of values. Diversity within a social group is the point examiners test.
Saying open-ended questions are better. They give depth but are far harder to analyse.
Describing a graph without numbers. Quote values off the axes.
Ignoring a plateau. Where a line flattens is as informative as where it rises.
Assuming reported values predict behaviour. People often act differently from what they say.
Up next: Worldviews and the Environment. Values belong to individuals; worldviews are the bigger, deeper frames that whole groups share — and they are what environmental value systems are built from.
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