A study of values of rural folk

Abstract

Rokeach defined a person’s values as standards that guide his actions or guide him to take particular positions on various social, ideological, political, and religious issues. By these standards he evaluates and judges himself and others.

Rokeach categorizes values as either terminal or instrumental values. Terminal or ends values are beliefs or conceptions about desirable end states of existence that are worth striving for, like happiness and wisdom.

Instrumental values are conceptions about desirable modes of behavior that are instrumental to the attainment of desirable endstates, such as behaving honestly or responsibly.

The Research Instrument To get at the values of rural folk, the Sentence Completion Technique (SCT), a projective technique, was used because it was felt that much of psychological data like attitudes, fears, interests, and values often elude accurate measurement with the use of direct methods.

A projective technique, like SCT, may lack objectivity since the material given to complete the stimulus may be interpreted by various content analysts in different ways. So, the researcher defined each value by listing under a value the various responses which she interpreted as reflective of that particular value.