The Atlas of European Values Project: Possibilities of Mapping the Values of Europeans and Challenges for Geography

The European Values Study (EVS) is a large-scale, cross-national and longitudinal research programme on basic human values, initiated in the late 1970s. A product of this research is the Atlas of European Values (AoEV), published by the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands for the second time. The Atlas of European Values offers maps and background information on the opinions of the population in 46 European countries. In chapters about Europe, family, work, religion, politics, society and well-being, diversity and similarities in values patterns are shown. On the website www.atlasofeuropeanvalues.eu maps of the European Values Study are accessible for free. In addition, the website offers different map tools, videos, background information and other teaching materials that are very useful sources of information for geographers and geography teachers. The most important theories to explain the value patterns that the research shows us are modernization theories. In this article, the basic findings on values are explained with respect to the theoretical frame and some examples with a special focus on Turkey are given. The findings challenge geography and other sciences, to what extent mapping the values of Europeans is possible. Two of these challenges are regionalizing the data and exploring the "context" for explaining the differences among countries