In its positive sense, a recommendation to make a value judgment is an admonition to consider carefully, to avoid whim and impetuousness, and search for consonance with one's deeper convictions, and to search for an objective, verifiable, public, and consensual set of evidence for the opinion. In its disparaging sense the term value judgment can imply that a conclusion is insular, one-sided, and not objective.

Value judgment also can refer to a tentative judgment