The development of a glossary of contemporary Chinese values and its initial application

A value is an outward or inward view of what is “worthwhile” and is a belief system that people uses to distinguish between good and bad and to guide their behavior. Values vary from culture to culture and from time to time. In order to develop a vocabulary for measuring the values of contemporary Chinese, an open-ended survey was conducted in Study 1 to collect the value vocabulary of the Chinese public, and a text analysis was conducted in Study 2 to acquire the value vocabulary of the Chinese society. In Study 3, a word list of contemporary Chinese values was developed by integrating the words obtained from the above two studies and combining words from previous studies, and a preliminary application of the word list was conducted. The results revealed that Chinese values include four dimensions: self-fulfillment , self-cultivation , social development, and interpersonal ethics . Chinese values are characterized by diversity, and some of the socially advocated values have been internalized into the value system of individuals.