Personal value statistics: Certainty

Certainty appeared in the ranked ten of 18.0% of the 2,099,004 assessments completed since 2020, which makes it the 21st most frequently ranked of the 62 core values.

What certainty means as a value →

Certainty

I want things to feel stable and predictable. I feel uneasy when I don’t know what’s coming.

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At a glance, 2020 to 2026

Appearance rateof assessments rank it in their ten. 21st of 62 values.: 18.0%
First placeof assessments put it first. 11th of 62 on this measure.: 2.2%
Top threeof assessments put it in the top three. 36% of those who rank it.: 6.5%
Average positionis its mean position, out of ten, where it is ranked at all.: 5.1

In the overall ranking certainty sits just below Compassion (18.1%) and just above Control (17.6%).

How the Popularity of Certainty Has Changed

In 2020 certainty appeared in 17.8% of assessments and ranked 22nd. In 2026 so far it appeared in 14.6% and ranked 29th, a fall of 3.2 percentage points.

Pick a measure, and read it by year or month by month. A month holds a few thousand assessments, so it moves more than a year does. The gaps are months the archive has no data for.

Certainty, year by year

Each rank is among the 62 values that year, by appearance rate. The arrow is its move from the year before.

Certainty by year: assessments, appearance rate and rank, first place, top three and average position
Year	Assessments	Appearance rate	Rank	First place	Top three	Average position
2020	84,378	17.8%	22nd	2.2%	6.8%	4.9
2021	224,096	18.1%	20th▲2	2.4%	7.0%	4.9
2022	179,271	18.4%	18th▲2	2.5%	7.2%	4.9
2023	397,249	18.7%	17th▲1	2.5%	7.1%	5.0
2024	460,244	19.0%	17th	2.4%	7.2%	5.0
2025	449,233	18.5%	21st▼4	2.1%	6.3%	5.3
2026 so far	304,533	14.6%	29th▼8	1.4%	4.4%	5.6

2020 holds 6 months of data and 2022 holds 7 months of data, so their figures cover part of the year. 2026 covers January to September 2026.

Certainty by Country

Of the 25 countries with enough assessments to publish, participants in Singapore rank certainty most often, at 21.6%, and those in Brazil least often, at 6.2%.

Country is recorded for the assessments from December 2025 to September 2026, so this section reads those 272,982 assessments and compares each country with all of them.

Where certainty is ranked most often

15.0% of participants rank certainty in their top ten, from 21.6% in Singapore to 6.2% in Brazil. Tap or hover a country to see its top values.

6–9%
9–11%
11–14%
14–17%
17–19%
19–22%
too few assessments

Appearance rate of certainty by country, December 2025 to September 2026
Country	Assessments	Appearance rate	vs average (pp)	Rank there
Singapore	2,481	21.6%	+6.6	14th of 62
Romania	1,535	21.0%	+5.9	16th of 62
Poland	423	20.8%	+5.8	17th of 62
Egypt	3,089	20.3%	+5.3	16th of 62
Indonesia	1,533	19.9%	+4.9	18th of 62
South Africa	2,608	19.1%	+4.0	17th of 62
Philippines	5,645	18.4%	+3.4	18th of 62
Hong Kong SAR China	369	16.8%	+1.8	21st of 62
United Kingdom	13,561	16.7%	+1.7	23rd of 62
Germany	2,274	16.7%	+1.6	25th of 62
Ireland	385	15.8%	+0.8	27th of 62
Netherlands	2,246	15.6%	+0.6	29th of 62
Canada	18,667	14.6%	−0.4	29th of 62
United States	154,508	14.6%	−0.4	29th of 62
Switzerland	1,067	14.5%	−0.5	28th of 62
India	7,202	14.3%	−0.7	29th of 62
New Zealand	5,381	14.3%	−0.8	35th of 62
Australia	22,203	13.9%	−1.2	31st of 62
Saudi Arabia	768	13.3%	−1.8	30th of 62
Mexico	941	12.5%	−2.5	34th of 62
Malaysia	1,057	12.2%	−2.8	43rd of 62
United Arab Emirates	481	11.2%	−3.8	39th of 62
Italy	564	9.8%	−5.3	44th of 62
France	667	9.1%	−5.9	46th of 62
Brazil	373	6.2%	−8.9	57th of 62

Every assessment with a known country, 15.0%

Certainty by Age

Certainty is ranked more often with age, from 10.9% of assessments among participants under 18 to 13.4% among those 65 and over, about 0.3 points per band.

Age is an optional question after the ranking, so this section reads the 66,624 assessments from December 2025 to September 2026 whose participants gave one. A difference between bands mixes what changes as people age with what differs between generations.

Appearance rate of certainty by age band, December 2025 to September 2026
Age	Assessments	Appearance rate	vs average (pp)	Rank there
Under 18	14,615	10.9%	−3.2	44th of 62
18–24	15,203	15.5%	+1.3	29th of 62
25–34	14,080	16.2%	+2.1	24th of 62
35–44	11,071	15.3%	+1.2	26th of 62
45–54	7,261	12.9%	−1.3	36th of 62
55–64	3,296	12.7%	−1.4	35th of 62
65 and over	1,098	13.4%	−0.8	34th of 62

Everyone who gave an age, 14.2%

Certainty by Gender

Women rank certainty more often than men, by 0.9 percentage points.

Gender is optional too, asked beside age, so this section reads the 64,656 assessments from December 2025 to September 2026 whose participants gave one. “Prefer not to say” is counted in no group.

Appearance rate of certainty by gender, December 2025 to September 2026
Gender	Assessments	Appearance rate	vs average (pp)	Rank there
Women	37,968	14.5%	+0.4	30th of 62
Men	25,478	13.5%	−0.5	34th of 62
Non-binary	1,210	13.8%	−0.3	33rd of 62

Everyone who gave a gender, 14.1%

About These Figures

Every figure on this page is a share of completed assessments on Personalvalu.es, read from the same aggregates as the Global Values Research. The appearance rate is how often certainty is among a participant's ten most important values. It is not a score, and a difference between groups describes the participants in them without explaining it.

How the aggregates are built, and why some countries and groups are left out, is set out in the methodology. Month-by-month figures for every value are in the monthly archive.

Statistics for every value

Where does certainty stand among your own values? Rank your own values.