American Health Values Survey II, [United States], 2019-2020

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has a vision to build a Culture of Health (CoH) by making health a shared national priority, one valued and advanced by multiple stakeholders across all sectors of society. This vision embraces a very broadly integrated and comprehensive approach to health, one where well-being lies at the center of every aspect of American life. In 2014, the RWJF commissioned NORC at the University of Chicago to plan and conduct the first American Health Values Survey (AHVS) to understand the extent to which United States adults held views consistent with this vision. The idea was to explore which types of United States adults were more supportive and less supportive of the goal and what the differences were between the more and less supportive groups. To aid in the understanding of these differences, NORC developed a typology of United States adults based on their values and beliefs related to the CoH vision.

Using a large-scale national survey fielded in late 2015 and early 2016, NORC identified 6 major segments of the population of adults in the United States based on their differing health values and beliefs and developed detailed profiles of each segment that described their pattern of values and beliefs as well as their demographic, political and other characteristics. NORC subsequently replicated the typology development work in five RWJF Sentinel Communities across the nation and also developed a typology of rural America. The same segments, or similar ones, were common across various geographic areas of the United States. Four years have since passed, in which changes occurred in the country. RWJF in 2019 commissioned NORC to conduct a second national, cross-sectional survey (AHVS II) in late 2019 and early 2020.