The Sociology Department, College of Humanities and Social Sciences at United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) organized a session entitled ‘Global Value Systems and Regional Value System in the Arab World in comparison with six other World Regions’ on 16^th Jan 2018 at the Auditorium in the College of IT Building, UAEU.

The session was delivered by Dr. Christian Haerpfer, Sociology Department, UAEU, and a member of World Value Survey Association (WVSA), a global network of social scientists, and attended by a number of UAEU faculty and students.

Dr. Haerpfer showcased a thorough presentation of the results of the WVSA wave 7, started in April 2017. Similar to the previous waves, WVS-7 questionnaire is an extensive research tool comprising of 290 questions and measuring cultural values, attitudes and beliefs towards gender, family, and religion, attitudes and experience of poverty, education, health, and security, social tolerance and trust, attitudes towards multilateral institutions, cultural differences and similarities between regions and societies.

In addition, the WVS-7 questionnaire has been elaborated with the inclusion of such new topics as the issues of justice, moral principles, corruption, accountability and risk, migration, national security and global governance.

WVS-7 questionnaire is structured along 14 thematic sub-sections, such as: social values, attitudes & stereotypes, societal well-being, social capital, trust and organizational membership, economic values, corruption, migration, post-materialist index, science & technology, religious values, security, ethical values & norms, and demography.

The 7^th wave survey is also contributing towards monitoring the set of Sustainable Development Goals and the targets defined by the UN post-2015 agenda. The questionnaire as well as the data and all the other survey related materials will be made available for the public early 2020.

At the end of the session, the students discussed the opportunities of conducting social studies and exploring new methods of carrying out applied social research in line with research methodologies of international comparative studies.