How Even Over works

You turn a pile of value words into an order, in about 12 minutes. Ratings tend to come out with everything marked important, so the order comes from choices instead.

1. A card sort with a cap of ten

   You sort the 83 words and short descriptions of the Personal Values Card Sort into three piles. As in the card sort’s research protocol, the very important pile holds no more than ten.

   Sources: Miller et al., 2001; CASAA instructions

2. Choices between two values, not ratings

   Rating scales let people mark most values as important, and some respondents rate nearly everything the same. Choosing between two at a time forces the trade-off a ranking needs. An adaptive merge sort asks for at most 25 of the 45 possible pairs among ten values, and every answer is kept as evidence.

   Sources: Moors et al., 2016; Lee, Soutar & Louviere; Maystre & Grossglauser, 2015

3. Bands and ties instead of false precision

   People are surer of their top and bottom values than of the middle ones, so your result groups ranks into bands, Top, Core and Important, and shows two values as tied when their win counts are less than one apart.

   Sources: Crace & Brown, LVI guide

4. A core-ness check and a why question

   For each of your top five, you answer three questions about whether you would keep it if it cost you, if no one noticed, and in fifty years. You also say where it comes from: who you are, how you were raised, or something else. A value that does not pass is marked as one you are reaching for. It keeps its place.

   Sources: Collins & Porras; Lencioni, 2002; Blackledge & Ciarrochi

5. Results that cite your choices

   Vague, flattering feedback feels accurate to almost anyone. Each line of your result points to your own answers, such as how many comparisons a value won, and every result includes one pair from your answers that may pull against each other.

   Sources: Furnham & Schofield

6. Section names, not a progress bar

   Progress bars do not reduce drop-off in surveys and some kinds increase it. Stage 1 shows named sections with a time estimate for each.

   Sources: Villar, Callegaro & Yang, 2013

7. An optional portrait

   After your result you can rate 57 short statements, in about 7 minutes. The statements are written for Even Over against the published definitions of Schwartz’s 19 refined values. Your scores are centred on your own average, which removes how generously you use the scale, and your top ten words are placed on the circle of values. Single values are measured less reliably than the four higher-order groups, so the value-level lines are worded as indicative and the two axis scores carry the stronger claims.

   Sources: Schwartz et al., 2012; Schwartz, ESS; Schwartz & Cieciuch, 2022

You see which of your top values may pull against each other, and you decide which tensions are real for you. Every flag is a suggestion you accept or dismiss.

1. Three ways to find a tension

   Structural: two of your values sit on opposite sides of Schwartz’s circle. From your choices: a pair you called hard to say, or a loop such as A over B, B over C and C over A. Flagged: a value you said no amount of anything would justify going against.

   Sources: Schwartz et al., 2012; Baron & Spranca, 1997

2. Protected values stay out of number controls

   Asking people to put a price on a value they hold as sacred tends to provoke outrage, so a protected value never appears on a slider or a score. Its tensions are framed as two things that both matter.

   Sources: Tetlock, 2003

3. Time or value?

   Many conflicts are about how much time each part of life gets, not about which value wins in the same situation. You answer one question to tell them apart, and time conflicts go to planning instead of to principles. Placing your values in work, relationships and leisure shows where one role holds two tensions.

   Sources: Harris; Smout et al., 2014; Crace & Brown, LVI guide

You turn a tension you confirmed into a rule for the decisions that test it, in six small steps.

1. A rule for trading one value off against another

   When two values both matter, people either downplay one or work out a rule for when each one wins. The principle builder walks you through the second.

   Sources: Value pluralism model

2. When, then, even over

   Each principle names the situation (“When …”), the action (“I will …”) and which value wins, written as A even over B. If-then plans have a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals across many studies; whether they work the same way for value trade-offs is an open question.

   Sources: Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; The Ready, via The Overlap

3. The cost, the reverse test and a review date

   You write what the rule gives up, read it reversed to check that it changes what you would do, and set a date to review it against the decisions you logged.

   Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia: Berlin; The Ready, via The Overlap; Dalio, Principles

You check how closely you live what you ranked, in a few minutes a week.

1. A gap map

   For each part of life you place a dot on a target: the centre is living a value fully, the edge is far from it. The wording and the graphic are original.

   Sources: Lundgren et al., 2012

2. A weekly pulse

   Reviews of values work find its benefits come more consistently when people act on their values. The pulse asks about acting: eight original statements about the past week, four about progress and four about what got in the way, kept as two separate scores.

   Sources: Smout et al., 2014; Napier & Mangat, 2026

3. A private write before a hard day, and a monthly comparison

   Before an event you flag as stressful, you can write for ten minutes about your top value; it stays private. Once a month you see your ranking next to the decisions you logged and decide whether the ranking or the behaviour should move.

   Sources: Cohen & Sherman, 2014; Rokeach & Cochrane, 1972

Licensing: what is ours and what is not

The wording of most values questionnaires is protected, so Even Over builds on their published theories and definitions and writes its own items. It uses only one source word for word.

Used word for word

The 83 words and their short descriptions come from Miller et al.’s Personal Values Card Sort, which its authors placed in the public domain. Words appear in sentence case; nothing else is changed.

Sources: Miller et al., 2001

Written for Even Over

The 19 value definitions, the 57 portrait statements and the 8 pulse statements are original. The portrait statements were written against the definitions Schwartz and colleagues published; the circle’s structure, its order and its groups are cited from that work. No item from the Portrait Values Questionnaire, its revised form or the European Social Survey’s values scale was used. The pulse follows the two ideas of the Valuing Questionnaire, progress and obstruction, in new words.

Sources: Schwartz et al., 2012; Smout et al., 2014

Editorial, and labelled so

Which of the 19 circle values each of the 83 words sits closest to is our own judgement. No published key exists, so every placement is marked provisional, is shown to you as editorial and is never used as a score.

Not used

No item text, word list or report wording from the Life Values Inventory, the VIA Survey, the Barrett Personal Values Assessment, the Rokeach Value Survey or the Hall-Tonna Inventory of Values. Where one of them informed a step above, it is the published idea or finding that is cited, not its wording.

Questions

Sources

1. Miller, W. R., C’de Baca, J., Matthews, D. B., & Wilbourne, P. L. (2001). Personal Values Card Sort. University of New Mexico. motivationalinterviewing.org
2. Center on Alcohol, Substance use, And Addictions, University of New Mexico. Personal Values Card Sort: instructions. casaa.unm.edu
3. Moors, G., et al. (2016). Survey Research Methods. ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de
4. Lee, J. A., Soutar, G. N., & Louviere, J. Conference paper on best-worst scaling and Schwartz’s values. ANZAM. anzam.org
5. Maystre, L., & Grossglauser, M. (2015). Preprint on active ranking by sorting, arXiv:1502.05556. arxiv.org
6. Crace, R. K., & Brown, D. Life Values Inventory: Facilitator’s Guide (sample). Applied Psychology Resources. lifevaluesinventory.org
7. Collins, J. Vision Framework (after Collins, J., & Porras, J. I., Built to Last). jimcollins.com
8. Lencioni, P. (2002). Make your values mean something. Harvard Business Review. files.tablegroup.com
9. Blackledge, J. T., & Ciarrochi, J. Personal Values Questionnaire. Association for Contextual Behavioral Science. contextualscience.org
10. Furnham, A., & Schofield, S. The Barnum effect in personality assessment: a review of the literature. cortecs.org
11. Villar, A., Callegaro, M., & Yang, Y. (2013). Where am I? A meta-analysis of experiments on the effects of progress indicators for web surveys. research.google
12. Schwartz, S. H., et al. (2012). Refining the theory of basic individual values. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(4), 663–688. doi.org
13. Schwartz, S. H., & Cieciuch, J. (2022). Measuring the refined theory of individual values in 49 cultural groups. Assessment. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
14. Schwartz, S. H. Human values: chapter 7 of the European Social Survey core questionnaire development report. europeansocialsurvey.org
15. Baron, J., & Spranca, M. (1997). Protected values. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 70(1), 1–16. rand.org
16. Tetlock, P. E. (2003). Thinking the unthinkable: sacred values and taboo cognitions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(7), 320–324. gwern.net
17. Harris, R. How to deal with values conflicts. actmindfully.com.au
18. Smout, M., Davies, M., Burns, N., & Christie, A. (2014). Development of the Valuing Questionnaire (VQ). Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science. contextualscience.org
19. Value pluralism model (Tetlock). Psychology, iResearchNet. psychology.iresearchnet.com
20. Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis of 94 tests. Summary at goalsandprogress.com. goalsandprogress.com
21. “Even over” statements, a format credited to The Ready. The Overlap. theoverlap.substack.com
22. Isaiah Berlin. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. plato.stanford.edu
23. Dalio, R. Principles: pain plus reflection equals progress. principles.com
24. Lundgren, T., Luoma, J. B., Dahl, J., Strosahl, K., & Melin, L. (2012). The Bull’s-Eye Values Survey: a psychometric evaluation. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice. academia.edu
25. Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 333–371. labs.psych.ucsb.edu
26. Rokeach, M., & Cochrane, R. (1972). Self-confrontation and confrontation with another as determinants of long-term value change. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. prejudicereduction.princeton.edu
27. Napier & Mangat (2026). Values clarification: a systematic review of 50 randomised controlled trials. contextualscience.org