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A major theme running through the work of Harry Triandis is an emphasis on the importance of" multimethod probes" of our central constructs, especially in cross-cultural work (eg, Triandis, McCusker, & Hui, 1990; Triandis, 1994). Triandis draws approvingly on Campbell (1986) and Fiske (1986) who argue that findings from single methods often fail to replicate and that multiple methods, including both" hard" and" soft" approaches, should be coordinated. In this spirit, this chapter reports research in the domain of basic human values (Schwartz, 1992, 1994). We address two questions:(1) Can the key postulates of the theory of individual values, validated thus far with a single instrument, be validated with a new, alternative instrument?(2) Is the distinct content of ten motivational types of human values specified by the theory also expressed in spontaneous self-construals?

The multitrait-multimethod approach advocated by Campbell and Fiske (1959) seeks to resolve the issue of how well operations (measurements) match the concepts they are intended to measure. This approach requires a clear, unequivocal definition of each concept and it assumes that a particular operation or set of operations is intended to measure the criterial attribute (s) of that concept. This is the approach taken in the first study reported below. We measure the central constructs in the theory of basic human values with two different" hard" methods and compare the findings. In so doing, this study presents, for the first time, an alternative instrument designed to measure value priorities among children and adults for whom the previously available instrument was too abstract.