Standardising the reproduction of Schwartz’s two-dimensional value space using multi-dimensional scaling and goodness-of-fit test procedures

Numerous empirical studies based on Schwartz’s famous Theory of Basic Values also use his Portrait Values Questionnaire to collect data. Many of these follow Schwartz by using multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) and goodness-of-fit (GoF) tests to ascertain the extent to which their empirical results reproduce his two-dimensional model and visually represent the results. A small number report their analytical procedures in some detail, however, most mention MDS and accompanying measures of GoF without providing sufficient detail. This omission creates problems for researchers wanting to undertake comparative work across these values studies that use MDS together with GoF tests. Bilsky et al. (J Cross Cult Psychol 42(5):759–776, 2011) advocate careful description of MDS methods, which allows easy reproduction by others. This is an important step towards consistency and transparency that promote rigorous scientific practice. However, these procedural steps could be more detailed, standardised and even automated. In this paper we argue for the standardisation of Schwartz et al.’s MDS and GoF procedures. To this end, we methodically describe and introduce our computer programme (S2-D) to automate almost all the steps. We also introduce two new ways of measuring the GoF.