Affiliate disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase through one of these links, Method Examined may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. This does not affect our editorial analysis or conclusions.
What do you really value?
Most people answer that question by naming things they believe are important.
Family.
Health.
Freedom.
Career.
Relationships.
Learning.
Financial security.
But John Demartini’s Value Determination Process takes a different approach.
Instead of starting with what you say matters, it asks you to examine what your life repeatedly appears to demonstrate through your time, money, attention, organization, goals, conversations, and behavior.
The process uses 13 areas of inquiry to identify what Demartini calls your hierarchy of values.
It is free, relatively quick, and central to several parts of his broader personal-development system.
But what exactly does the exercise measure?
Is it psychologically valid?
And how much weight should you give the results?
The Short Answer
The Demartini Value Determination Process is a structured self-reflection exercise designed to identify recurring patterns in how you live.
Its strongest feature is that it pushes you away from aspirational answers such as:
“What kind of person do I want to be?”
and toward observational questions such as:
“What does my actual behavior repeatedly show?”
That can be useful.
People do sometimes confuse socially desirable values with the priorities their everyday behavior actually reflects.
However, we did not identify peer-reviewed psychometric validation research establishing the Demartini Value Determination Process as a scientifically validated assessment instrument.
So the most reasonable way to use it is:
as a structured tool for reflection and hypothesis generation — not as an objective psychological test that reveals your identity with scientific precision.
What Is the Demartini Value Determination Process?
The Value Determination Process was developed by John Demartini as a way of identifying what he describes as a person’s hierarchy of values.
Demartini argues that everyone has priorities arranged from relatively more important to relatively less important.
According to his framework, the higher something sits in your hierarchy, the more likely you are to:
- give it time;
- spend energy on it;
- organize around it;
- think about it;
- talk about it;
- learn about it;
- pursue related goals;
- and act without needing much external motivation.
Lower-priority activities, in his model, are more likely to involve procrastination, hesitation, distraction, or the feeling that you “should” be doing something.
The Value Determination Process attempts to infer those priorities by looking for repeated patterns across different parts of life.
Why Not Simply Ask “What Are Your Values?”
This is probably the most interesting idea behind the process.
If someone asks:
“What are your most important values?”
you may give an idealized answer.
You might name:
- family;
- health;
- integrity;
- education;
- spirituality;
- financial independence;
because those things sound admirable.
But suppose your actual week looks like this:
you spend most discretionary time building a business;
most of your reading is about business;
your conversations repeatedly return to business;
your workspace is organized around business;
you willingly spend money on business tools;
and your long-term goals are overwhelmingly entrepreneurial.
The Demartini framework would treat that repeated behavioral pattern as stronger evidence than simply saying:
“Family is my highest value.”
That does not necessarily mean family is unimportant.
It means the exercise asks you to distinguish stated ideals from demonstrated priorities.
That distinction can be genuinely useful.
How the 13 Questions Work
The official process looks across 13 different indicators.
Rather than reproducing every question word for word, the areas can be summarized as asking you to examine:
- what tends to occupy your personal environment;
- where your time repeatedly goes;
- where you direct energy and feel energized;
- how you tend to spend discretionary money;
- which areas of life you naturally keep organized;
- where you are most reliable, disciplined, and focused;
- what repeatedly occupies your thoughts;
- what future outcomes you repeatedly imagine and move toward;
- what themes dominate your internal dialogue;
- what subjects you naturally talk about with other people;
- what consistently inspires you;
- which long-term goals persist rather than disappear;
- what you repeatedly enjoy learning about.
The goal is not to answer with what sounds admirable.
You are supposed to look for what your existing life already demonstrates.
Why Are There 39 Answers?
The process asks you to generate multiple answers for each of the 13 areas.
That produces 39 responses.
You then look for repeated themes.
For example, imagine answers across several categories include:
- reading investment books;
- monitoring financial markets;
- talking about investing;
- saving for financial independence;
- organizing investment records;
- thinking about building assets.
Those answers might all be grouped under a broader theme such as:
wealth building or investing.
Another person might repeatedly generate answers involving:
- children;
- family travel;
- family photographs;
- parenting;
- education;
- time with relatives.
Those could point toward a family-related priority.
The repeated themes are then ranked according to how often they appear.
That ranked pattern becomes the proposed hierarchy.
What Is the Process Trying to Measure?
This is where terminology matters.
Demartini calls the results your hierarchy of values.
But “values” can mean different things in different psychological systems.
In mainstream values research, personal values are often treated as broad guiding principles or desirable goals that influence attitudes, choices, and behavior.
Well-known psychological models have developed standardized questionnaires and theoretical structures for studying them.
Demartini’s system takes a somewhat different route.
It places unusually strong emphasis on observable patterns of daily life.
That means his “hierarchy of values” is partly functioning as a model of:
- priorities;
- motivation;
- attention;
- behavioral allocation;
- goal pursuit;
- and repeated interests.
There is overlap with mainstream values psychology.
The constructs should not automatically be treated as identical.
Does Psychology Support the Idea That Values Affect Behavior?
Yes.
There is substantial psychological research showing relationships between personal values, goals, attitudes, preferences, and behavior.
Research based on widely used values frameworks has found that people are more likely to behave in ways that express goals and principles that matter strongly to them.
Likewise, research on self-concordant goals suggests that people tend to show greater sustained effort toward goals that are more consistent with their underlying interests and values.
That provides a reasonable foundation for a broad principle:
what matters deeply to someone can influence what they pursue and how persistently they pursue it.
But this needs an important qualifier.
Evidence that values influence behavior does not prove that one particular 13-question exercise can perfectly infer a person’s hierarchy of values.
Those are separate questions.
Can Behavior Reveal Values?
To an extent.
Observing behavior can sometimes reveal priorities that self-description misses.
Imagine someone who says:
“Fitness is one of the most important things in my life.”
But over several years they:
- rarely exercise;
- do not learn about health;
- make no plans around it;
- allocate little time to it;
- and repeatedly prioritize other activities.
It is reasonable to ask whether fitness is an actual high priority or an aspirational identity.
The Demartini process is good at forcing that question.
But behavior also has limitations as evidence of values.
The Biggest Limitation: Behavior Is Constrained
What you do is not determined only by what you value.
People also act according to:
- obligations;
- income;
- health;
- caregiving responsibilities;
- employment requirements;
- geography;
- discrimination;
- access to resources;
- social expectations;
- emergencies;
- and other constraints.
Consider someone who spends most of their waking time at a job they dislike.
It would be simplistic to conclude:
“Work must be their highest value because that is where they spend the most time.”
Perhaps they value their children highly and work those hours specifically to support them.
Likewise, spending patterns do not simply reveal values.
Someone may spend most of their income on rent, food, medical costs, or debt payments because those expenses are unavoidable.
So the Value Determination Process works best when its questions are treated as clues, not mathematical proof.
Another Limitation: Means and Ends Can Look Different
Suppose someone spends enormous amounts of time running a business.
What does that reveal?
Maybe they primarily value:
- entrepreneurship;
- achievement;
- creativity;
- wealth;
- security;
- status;
- freedom;
- providing for family;
- or social impact.
The same behavior can serve different underlying goals.
Demartini’s own framework recognizes that some activities may function as means toward something valued more highly.
That means interpretation still matters.
The process is not purely objective simply because it begins with observable behavior.
Someone still needs to decide what repeated answers actually represent.
What About Procrastination?
Demartini frequently connects low-priority activities with procrastination.
There is some intuitive truth in this.
People often procrastinate less on activities they genuinely enjoy or strongly value.
But procrastination is more complicated than a values hierarchy alone.
People can deeply care about something and still avoid it.
Examples include:
- a student who strongly values graduating but delays an important thesis;
- an entrepreneur who values the business but avoids bookkeeping;
- someone who values health but fears a medical appointment;
- a writer who values writing but procrastinates because of perfectionism.
Motivation matters.
So can anxiety, task aversiveness, immediate rewards, self-regulation, uncertainty, perfectionism, executive functioning, and habit.
Therefore:
“I procrastinate on this”
does not necessarily mean:
“I do not value this.”
The Value Determination Process may identify one possible explanation.
It should not be treated as the only explanation.
Are Higher Values Automatically Better?
No.
One useful aspect of the framework is that Demartini does not formally require everyone to have the same values.
A person’s highest priority might involve:
- raising children;
- science;
- art;
- business;
- spirituality;
- athletics;
- learning;
- relationships;
- wealth;
- social contribution;
- travel;
- or something much more specific.
The exercise is intended to identify what is already important rather than prescribe a morally approved list.
That can make it less judgmental than values exercises that implicitly reward certain answers.
However, identifying a value does not automatically make every behavior associated with it healthy or wise.
A high priority can still produce:
- obsession;
- neglect of other responsibilities;
- interpersonal conflict;
- risky decisions;
- or harmful behavior.
Describing a priority is not the same as endorsing it.
Can Values Change?
Yes — and both Demartini’s framework and mainstream values research allow for change.
Demartini describes values as evolving across different stages of life.
That makes intuitive sense.
What dominates life at 20 may be different from what dominates it at 40 or 70.
Psychological research generally finds that personal values show meaningful stability but are not completely fixed.
Life experiences, changing social roles, major transitions, and deliberate reflection can all be associated with changes in value priorities.
A systematic review of experimental research has also found evidence that values can be shifted under some conditions.
So a Value Determination result should not be treated as:
“This is who I permanently am.”
A more useful interpretation is:
“This appears to describe some of my strongest current priorities.”
Is the Demartini Value Determination Process Scientifically Validated?
This is where the answer needs to be precise.
We did not identify peer-reviewed research establishing the 13-question Demartini Value Determination Process as a validated psychometric instrument.
That means we did not find published evidence establishing properties such as:
- test-retest reliability;
- internal or structural validity;
- convergent validity with established values measures;
- discriminant validity;
- predictive accuracy;
- normative reference data;
- or cross-cultural measurement performance.
That does not mean the exercise is useless.
Many useful reflective exercises are not psychometric tests.
It means the result should not be presented with more scientific precision than the evidence supports.
What Would Validation Look Like?
Researchers could test the Value Determination Process in several ways.
For example, they might ask:
Do people get similar hierarchies when they repeat the exercise later?
That would tell us something about reliability.
How do results compare with established values questionnaires?
That could examine convergent validity.
Do the results predict future choices or behavior?
That would test predictive usefulness.
Do independent scorers categorize the same responses similarly?
That could test whether the ranking procedure depends too heavily on interpretation.
Does the tool work similarly across cultures, ages, income levels, and life circumstances?
That would test generalizability.
Without studies of that kind, the process remains better described as a proprietary self-reflection method than as an established psychological assessment.
Does That Mean You Should Ignore the Results?
Not at all.
A useful distinction is:
measurement versus reflection.
You might use a scientifically validated scale because you want a standardized measurement.
You might use the Demartini Value Determination Process because you want to ask better questions about your life.
Those are different objectives.
A result can be personally useful without carrying clinical or psychometric authority.
Suppose the exercise makes you notice:
“I keep saying I want a conventional corporate career, but almost every category points toward teaching, writing, and independent work.”
That observation may be worth exploring.
The exercise does not need to be a diagnostic instrument for the pattern to be interesting.
Be Careful With Surprising Results
People often assume the most surprising result must be the deepest truth.
Not necessarily.
If your result seems wrong, examine why.
Maybe you misunderstood the question.
Maybe your current life is dominated by a temporary crisis.
Maybe financial constraints distort your spending pattern.
Maybe caregiving responsibilities dominate your time.
Maybe a short-term project temporarily occupies your thoughts.
Maybe you grouped answers too broadly.
Or maybe the result really is exposing a mismatch between how you describe yourself and how you actually live.
Treat disagreement with the result as something to investigate, not something the test automatically overrides.
How to Get More Useful Results
The quality of the exercise depends heavily on the quality of your answers.
A few practical principles help.
Use Evidence, Not Ideals
Instead of:
“I value health.”
ask:
“What have I actually done consistently around health during the last year?”
Be Specific
“Personal growth” can mean almost anything.
Answers such as:
- studying psychology;
- improving athletic performance;
- building a company;
- learning languages;
are easier to interpret.
Look for Patterns Across Categories
One answer does not establish a hierarchy.
Repeated themes across time, money, conversation, learning, goals, and attention are more informative.
Distinguish Obligations From Chosen Activity
Ask:
“Would I still allocate attention here if external pressure disappeared?”
That helps separate genuine preference from constraint.
Repeat the Exercise Later
If a supposed top priority disappears when you repeat the process months later, it may have been temporary.
Is This the Same as the Demartini Method?
No.
This is an important distinction because the names are easy to confuse.
The Value Determination Process is designed to identify a hierarchy of priorities or values.
The Demartini Method is a separate structured questioning process aimed at examining emotionally polarized perceptions.
In simplified terms:
The Value Determination Process asks:
“What appears to matter most to me?”
The Demartini Method asks something closer to:
“What am I perceiving one-sidedly, and what information am I overlooking?”
They exist within the same broader philosophy, but they are not the same exercise.
For the second process, see The Demartini Method: What It Actually Is and How It Works.
How Does This Connect to the Priority Code?
This is where the Value Determination Process becomes commercially relevant within Demartini’s product ecosystem.
The free exercise introduces the core idea of a hierarchy of values.
The Priority Code develops that theme much further through a live workshop focused on:
- priorities;
- motivation;
- goal alignment;
- procrastination;
- relationships;
- and applications of Demartini’s values framework.
That creates a sensible progression:
free exercise first, paid workshop second.
From a consumer perspective, that is actually useful.
You can test the basic framework before spending money.
If the Value Determination Process feels meaningless or fundamentally unconvincing to you, there is little reason to assume four hours of deeper teaching will automatically change that.
If the exercise reveals patterns you find genuinely useful and you want to explore the framework more deeply, the Priority Code becomes a more coherent purchase.
For our independent analysis, see The Priority Code Review.
Should You Take the Free Value Determination Process?
For most people curious about Demartini’s values framework:
yes, probably.
It is free.
It takes relatively little time.
It does not require accepting the broader Demartini philosophy.
And it asks some genuinely useful questions.
The downside is small.
The mistake would be treating the result as more scientifically authoritative than the evidence justifies.
Use it as:
- a reflection tool;
- a way to identify repeated patterns;
- a starting point for goal discussion;
- or a prompt for examining the gap between stated and demonstrated priorities.
Do not treat it as:
- a diagnosis;
- a personality type;
- proof of your permanent identity;
- or an objectively validated ranking that cannot be questioned.
A Useful Experiment After You Finish
Once you have your top three themes, try something simple.
Do not immediately change your life.
Instead, observe yourself for the next seven days.
Track:
- discretionary time;
- discretionary spending;
- topics you voluntarily read about;
- conversations you initiate;
- tasks you do without reminders;
- and what occupies your mind when nobody is directing you.
Then compare those observations with your result.
If they broadly match, the exercise may be describing something useful.
If they do not, investigate the disagreement.
That turns the exercise from a one-time self-report into a small real-world test.
Our Verdict
The Demartini Value Determination Process is one of the more interesting parts of John Demartini’s system precisely because it starts with a sensible challenge:
what you say you value and what your life demonstrates may not always be the same thing.
Looking at repeated patterns in time, attention, money, organization, conversation, learning, and goals can reveal useful inconsistencies.
The process may help someone distinguish:
“This matters to me”
from:
“I think this should matter to me.”
That is a worthwhile exercise.
Where we would be more cautious is treating the resulting hierarchy as a scientifically validated measurement.
Psychology provides substantial evidence that values relate to goals and behavior.
It does not follow that Demartini’s exact 13-question scoring process has been scientifically established.
So our view is straightforward:
use the Value Determination Process as a structured mirror, not a laboratory instrument.
If it reveals something useful, explore it.
If the result does not fit your lived experience, question it.
And if you want to go deeper into Demartini’s values framework, do so because the basic exercise proved useful to you — not because a ranking told you what you must value.
Try the official free Value Determination Process
If you complete it and want a deeper live exploration of the values framework, you can also check current Priority Code dates and pricing.
Sources & References
Dr. John Demartini — About Vahttps://drdemartini.com/about-valueslues
Official explanation of Demartini’s hierarchy-of-values theory, the reasoning behind the Value Determination Process, and claims about motivation, priorities, behavior, and changing values.
Dr. John Demartini — Value Determination Process
Current official free version of the process, describing it as a roughly 30-minute exercise using 13 areas of inquiry.
Dr. John Demartini — The Demartini Value Determination Process PDF
Official step-by-step document explaining the 13-question structure, three responses per question, 39 total responses, and the process of grouping and ranking repeated themes.
Sagiv & Schwartz (2022) — Personal Values Across Cultures
Annual Review of Psychology overview of contemporary personal-values research, value structure, measurement, origins, change, and relationships with behavior.
Sagiv et al. (2017) — Personal Values in Human Life
Review examining the psychological study of personal values and evidence that self-reported values are related to attitudes, preferences, goals, and behavior.
Sheldon & Elliot (1999) — Goal Striving, Need Satisfaction, and Longitudinal Well-Being: The Self-Concordance Model
Research examining whether goals aligned with a person’s interests and values are associated with sustained effort, attainment, and well-being.
Russo et al. (2022) — Changing Personal Values Through Value-Manipulation Tasks: A Systematic Literature Review
Systematic review of experimental research examining whether personal value priorities can change.
Dr. John Demartini — The Priority Code
Official description of the paid live program that develops Demartini’s hierarchy-of-values framework further.