If a Swede shall describe with one word what he/she value as most important, the most usual answer is "honesty". The word "family" which was on top in several countries got only a third place in Sweden.
For the first time, a so called CTT-survey has been made in Sweden. This is an American produced experiment/survey to investigate and compare values in different countries. In short, the respondents are asked to choose ten words from a list. Then they rank them according to how important they think they are.
So, in Sweden ´honesty´ was number one. ´Humour´ was number two and ´family´ was on third place.
But there are differences within Sweden. If the sample is divided according to gender, it can be seen that Swedish women value ´family´ as the highest. If we look at regions we can see that in Skåne (south) Family is most important. If we look at Stockholm, ´Humour/joy´ is seen as most important.
´Family´ was the most popular word in for example the United States and Denmark. In Iceland, the word ´accountability´ was most important. This is probably no coincidence when thinking about the heavy economic crisis that has hit the country.
1016 persons took part in the Swedish CTT-survey.
Source: www.nsd.se
Mats Öhlén
mats.ohlen@stockholmnews.com