Family, Security, Achievement, Independence and Honesty: A Values Assessment That Found One Real Conflict Between Getting Ahead and Being Home, and What to Do About It
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
PSY/110: Psychology of Learning
Week 3 Values Assessment Worksheet
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The student is a composite written for a model worksheet.
This week I completed the values assessment by reading a list of thirty values, marking every one that felt important, and then cutting the list down until five remained. Cutting was harder than choosing. Between a dispatch job, a first-grader at home and a new business degree, I assumed my values would be obvious. The ranking surprised me: achievement came third, even though it is the reason I enrolled.
Part 1: My Five Core Values, Ranked
1. Family: being present for my son and helping my sister and parents when they need it.
2. Security: a steady income, savings and a home my son does not have to leave.
3. Achievement: doing work that is recognized as excellent, and moving up.
4. Independence: making my own decisions and not needing to be rescued.
5. Honesty: telling the truth, including when it costs me.
Schwartz (2012) describes ten basic values found across cultures and arranges them in a circle, with compatible values next to each other and conflicting values on opposite sides. My five fit his categories: family and honesty fall under benevolence, security under security, achievement under achievement and independence under self-direction. That mapping helped me see where tension would come from.
Part 2: Where My Values Come From and How They Show Up
Family: my mother raised three children alone and never missed a school event. I read with my son every night, even when I am exhausted, and I turned down a better-paying night shift last year.
Security: we were evicted once when I was twelve. I keep three months of expenses in savings, and I check my budget every Sunday.
Achievement: I have been passed over twice for promotion to dispatch manager, and it bothered me more than I admitted. I track my on-time delivery rate even though nobody asks me to.
Independence: I paid my own way since eighteen. I dislike asking for help, which is a problem I noticed in my Week 1 check-in.
Honesty: when a load goes out late because of my scheduling mistake, I say so to the customer instead of blaming the driver.
Part 3: Where My Values Conflict
Schwartz (2012) places achievement, which serves one's own success, opposite benevolence, which serves the people close to us. My life shows exactly that tension. The degree serves achievement, but every hour I spend studying is an hour I am not with my son. On two nights this week I studied instead of reading with him, and I felt guilty both times.
A second conflict is quieter. Independence makes me reluctant to let my sister watch my son on the evenings she offered, even though accepting would protect both my family time and my study time. My independence is working against my other values.
Part 4: Do My Goals Fit My Values?
My main goals are to finish my degree in four years, earn the manager position and buy a small house. I checked each one against my values. The house serves security and family. The promotion serves achievement and security. The degree serves all of those, but only if I finish it in a way that does not take me away from my son.
This check matters. Sheldon and Elliot (1999) found that students whose goals were self-concordant, meaning the goals expressed their own interests and values rather than outside pressure, put more sustained effort into those goals, made more progress on them and gained more in well-being over a semester. When I think of the degree as "something my job requires," it feels like pressure. When I think of it as the way to give my son a secure home and to show him what finishing looks like, it fits my top two values, and I want to do it.
Part 5: Using My Values When School Gets Hard
I will use my values in three ways.
First, I will reframe the degree around family and security, not only achievement. I wrote a sentence on an index card taped to my laptop: "This is how we get the house." On nights when I want to quit, I will read it.
Second, I will accept my sister's offer. Honesty requires admitting that I cannot do everything alone, and accepting help protects my first value.
Third, before stressful tasks such as exams, I will spend five minutes writing about why my top value matters to me. Cohen and Sherman (2014), reviewing research on values affirmation, found that brief writing about important personal values can reduce the effect of stress and threat on performance, with lasting benefits in some school settings. It costs five minutes, and it reminds me why I am doing this.
Summary
The assessment showed me that family and security matter more to me than achievement, even though achievement brought me back to school. It also exposed a real conflict between studying and time with my son, and a hidden one in my reluctance to accept help. Reframing the degree around my top values, accepting support and using short values writing before hard tasks are three concrete ways to let my values carry me through the course instead of pulling me apart.
References
Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 333-371. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115137
Schwartz, S. H. (2012). An overview of the Schwartz theory of basic values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116
Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 482-497. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.3.482
How this PSY 110 Week 3 example is structured
Student-shared copies of the PSY/110 Week 3 materials show a values assessment worksheet and values exercise. The sample follows the usual order of that work: choose and rank values, explain them with real examples, name a conflict, test goals against values and turn the result into a plan. Each part applies a concept from psychology, because the worksheet asks students to connect the assessment to the week's reading. Students search this week as PSY 110 Week 3, PSY110 Wk 3 or PSY/110 Wk 3; all three are the same assignment.
PSY/110 Week 3 questions, answered
What does PSY/110 Week 3 usually ask for?
Student-shared copies of the Week 3 materials show a values assessment worksheet and values exercise: identifying your most important values, explaining them and reflecting on how they connect to your goals and decisions. Your worksheet sets the exact list of values and questions.
Why does a psychology course ask about values?
Because values guide which goals people choose and how hard they work for them. Research on goals finds that people pursue goals that fit their values with more lasting effort, and writing about values can help people cope with stress and setbacks.
What if two of my values conflict?
That is normal and worth writing about. Values such as achievement and caring for others often pull in different directions. Naming the conflict and deciding how you will balance it shows more insight than listing values as if they never compete.
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