When self-direction meets conformity: Surfacing Schwartz's 10 basic human values in drug policy dialogue with lived/living experience participants

Background: Research on values is gaining in popularity within drug policy scholarship. To date, research has focused on analysing values within policy, through documentary analysis and interviews with key stakeholders. We extend this research enquiry to investigate the values that emerge from drug policy debate with those who have lived and/or living experience of using drugs.

Methods: We used workshop data collected from the ESRC-funded Drug Policy Voices project as the basis for our analysis. Within the workshops, participants were given a range of drug policy scenarios to discuss. We selected three scenarios for this paper which discussed policies related to cannabis, heroin, and MDMA/ecstasy. We coded the workshop data using Schwartz's ten basic values, which is a framework that perceives values as the core 'motivators of action' that underpin choices, attitudes and behaviours.

Results: We found that the values of 'self-direction', 'security' and 'conformity' were prominent across this participant group, when discussing these policy topics. Yet the drug policy preferences discussed in the workshops revealed that it is the combinations of values that nuance preferences. Security combined with self-direction supports policies that enhance personal responsibility for change; self-direction combined with hedonism supports freedom to use drugs, whereas self-direction combined with conformity and achievement supports recovery policies; and conformity combined with tradition and power supports abstinence-based drug prevention.

Conclusion: Schwartz's ten basic values provided a useful framework for surfacing values that underpin drug policy preferences. These exploratory findings demonstrate that identifying values within dialogue is a complex process and reinforces opposing values can explain policy preference differences. More importantly, policy preferences were underpinned by combinations of values including those that are apparently opposing in Schwartz's circumplex.