Human values as predictors for political, religious and health-related attitudes: A contribution towards validating the Austrian Value Questionnaire (AVQ) by Structural Equation Modeling

A representative Austrian sample (N = 421) received the Austrian Value Questionnaire (AVQ) as well as attitude scales measuring Patriotism, Nationalism, Authoritarianism, Religiosity and Sense of Coherence (SOC). By Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) sets of hypotheses were tested, predicting influences of values on attitudes in order to assess the validity of the AVQ. In line with the hypotheses, nationalistic values and low Open-Mindedness predicted nationalistic attitudes, and, combined with fundamentalistic Religiosity, also predicted Authoritarianism. Patriotism and Nationalism did not differ by the value orientations that predicted them. Hypotheses on Religiosity were only partly confirmed, those on SOC were not confirmed. The results pose some arguments for the construct validity of some of the AVQ-scales and their factorial validity was mostly confirmed, but more research toward the validation of the instrument is advocated.