The German version of the Material Values Scale

The Material Values Scale is an instrument to assess beliefs about the importance to own material things. This instrument originally consists of the three subscales: 'centrality', 'success', and 'happiness'. The present study investigated the psychometric properties of the German version of the MVS (G-MVS).

A population-based sample of 2,295 adult Germans completed the questionnaire in order to investigate the factorial structure. To test construct validity, additional samples were gathered among patients with compulsive buying (N=52) and medical students (N=347) who also answered the Compulsive Buying Scale (CBS) and the Patient Health Questionnaire depression scale (PHQ-8).

In the German population-based sample we could not confirm the 3-factor model but rather suggest a 2-factor solution with a first collapsed factor 'centrality/success', and the second factor 'happiness'. Patients with compulsive buying showed the highest scores on the G-MVS. While G-MVS scores among compulsive buyers and medical students were significantly related to compulsive buying scores, the correlation between the G-MVS and the depression measure appeared substantially lower. We did not find any gender differences regarding materialism, neither in the population-based sample nor in the students' or compulsive buyers' samples. However, age was negatively related to G-MVS scores.

Confirmatory factor analyses suggest a 2-factor model of the G-MVS. Overall, the results indicate the use of the G-MVS as a brief, psychometrically sound, and potentially valid measure for the assessment of material values.