OREANDA-NEWS. February 15, 2012. The World Values Survey - a project that explores social, cultural and political trends - appointed a University of Tartu researcher, Anu Realo, to its global network of social scientists, reported the press-centre of UT.

"Estonia's participation in this study has allowed us to monitor and map how the values of Estonia's inhabitants, beliefs and perspectives have changed over the last 20 years, and how we compare with other countries and peoples," said Anu Realo, the senior researcher of psychology at the University of Tartu who was given the position.

"It is an invaluable material, which, in addition to its scientific significance, is of practical value for understanding and developing various social, educational, economical and political decisions," she said.

The organization is directed by Ronald Inglehart, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. He founded and directs the World Values Survey, a global network of social scientists studying changing values and their impact on social and political life. Started in 1981, the World Values Survey has executed five waves of interviews with representative national surveys of 97 societies on all six inhabited continents. The survey has assessed Estonia since 1990s.

In September 2011, Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris (Harvard University) received the Johan Skytte Prize in political science awarded annually by the Skytte Foundation at Uppsala University for the most valuable contribution to political science. It was awarded to Inglehart and Norris "for innovative ideas about the relevance and roots of political culture in a global context, transcending previous mainstream approaches of research."
 
Mr Inglehart visited Estonia by the invitation from Institute of Government and Politics and the Centre for EU-Russia Studies (CEURUS), University of Tartu.

For more information about the Centre, see http://ceurus.ut.ee