Chapter 1 presented a theory of the role of emancipative values in the human empowerment process: human empowerment advances as the utility, value, and guarantee of freedoms grow. In this process, emancipative values provide the psychological link between freedoms’ growing utilities and guarantees. This chapter details how emancipative values are measured. The chapter is organized in three sections.

Section 1 portrays twelve items from the World Values Surveys and European Values Study suited to measure four domains of emancipative values. I explain why this combination of items is an improvement over Inglehart and Welzel’s (2005) “self-expression values.” I discuss different ways of combining the twelve items into an overall index of emancipative values and conclude that the most appropriate way to do so is to follow the logic of a so-called formative index.

Section 2 examines the quality of the emancipative values index (EVI) under reliability and validity criteria. Special emphasis is placed on whether the index represents a Western-specific concept. The analysis shows that this is not the case and that the index of emancipative values fares well in terms of cross-cultural validity.