Meaning: Sacred-vs.-Secular Values'' - 12-item index measuring a national culture's secular distance tosacred'' sources of authority, including (1) religious authority (faith, commitment, practice), (2) patrimonial authority (the nation, the state, the parents), (3) order institutions (army, police, courts), and (4) normative authority (anti-bribery, anti-cheating and anti-evasion norms).
Source: Index invented and documented in Welzel, Freedom Rising (2013: 63-66), www.cambridge.org/welzel (Online Appendix, p. 12-19), based on data from the World Values Surveys, all countries and time points.
Scaling: Continuous scale, ranging from a theoretical minimum of 0 when the least secular position is taken on all 12 items, to a maximum of 1.0 when the most secular position is taken on all 12 items. Intermediate positions are given in fractions of 1.0. Country scores are population averages (arithmetic mean) on the 0-1 index.
Remarks: The SVI is a conceptual refinement of Inglehart and Welzel's (2005) ``Traditional-vs.-Secular-rational Values''. Individual-level scores are normally distributed around the mean in each national sample.