This series began as a set of surveys conducted in ten West European societies by the European Value Systems Study Group (EVSSG). The World Values Survey (WVS) grew out of those surveys and was initiated in 1981 to study the values and attitudes of mass publics across nations of different economic, educational, and cultural backgrounds. The title of the series was changed to "World Values Surveys and European Values Surveys" with the addition of the 1995-1997 data.

This data collection, representing the fourth wave of surveys carried out by the World Values Survey (WVS) and European Values Survey (EVS) groups, covers 60 countries, with high priority given to obtaining coverage of Islamic societies and African societies, which have rarely been included in crossnational survey research. These surveys cover a broader range of variation than has before been available for analyzing the belief systems of mass publics. They provide data from representative national samples of the publics of 81 societies containing 85 percent of the world's population and covering a full range of variation, from societies with per capita incomes below 300 dollars per year, to societies with per capita incomes of more than 35,000 dollars per year, from long-established democracies to authoritarian states, and from societies with market economies to societies that are in the process of emerging from state-run economies. The surveys cover societies that were historically shaped by a wide variety of religious and cultural traditions, from Christian to Islamic to Confucian to Hindu, and from societies whose culture emphasizes social conformity and group obligations to societies in which the main emphasis is on human emancipation and self-expression.

WVS 2005 WAVE DATA FILES (New release: v20090901)The current release of the WVS 2005
includes data corresponding to 57 countries. These data have been split into two separate but compatible files,
named WVS2005-A and WVS2005-B.
WVS2005-List A includes countries having carried the complete questionnaire.
Current countries in this version are: Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Canada, Chile, China, Cyprus, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Mali, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Norway, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, USA, Vietnam, Zambia.
WVS2005-List B includes countries having carried a reduced version of the official questionnaire. Current countries in this list include: Colombia, France, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, Netherland, New Zealand, Russia, United Kingdom.