Chapter Two: Cross-Cultural Research Methods

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Georgia Cannon
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1 Chapter Two: Cross-Cultural Research Methods Types of Cross-Cultural Research: Method Validation Studies... *Validy refers to whether or not a scale, test or measure accurately measures what it is supposed to measure *Reliability refers to whether it measures it consistently *these two concepts are important to all researchers, cross-cultural researchers or not.. *cross-cultural researchers cannot simply take a scale or measure that was developed and validated in one culture and use it in another - just because it is valid in one culture, there is no reason to assume that its equally valid in any other culture Cross-cultural validation studies examine whether a measure of psychological construct that was originally generated in a single culture, is applicable, meaningful and most importantly psychometrically equivalent (that is, equally reliable and valid) in another culture *they test the equivalence of psychological measures and tests for use in other crosscultural comparative research *important to conduct before cross-cultural comparisons Indigenous Cultural Studies *characterized by rich descriptions of complex theoretical models of culture that predict and explain cultural differences *basic philosophy of this is that... psychological processes and behavior can only be understood within the cultural milieu within which it occurs; thus to understanding mental processes and behavior requires an in-depth analysis of the cultural systems that produce and support those processes and behaviors, linking them to each other *more recently has been used to explain cultural differences in a number of psychological processes, including morality, eye movements when viewing scenes, the nature of unspoken thoughts, the need for high self-esteem, and many others Cross-Cultural Comparisons... *are studies that compare cultures on some psychological variable of interest *these are the most prevalent types of cross-cultural study Types of Cross-Cultural Comparisons... There are four important dimensions that underline and characterize different types of cross-cultural comparisons: - Explanitory vs. Hypothesis testing - Contextual variable (how much: status age education reflects findings) - structure vs. lvl oriented - indivudual vs. ecological (cultural- country) lvl Exploratory vs. Hypothesis Testing... First Dimension *Exploratory studies designed to examine the existence of cross-cultural similarities and differences - researchers tend to stay close to the data in these studies *Hypothesis testing studies designed to examine why cultural differences may exist

2 - make larger inferential jumps by testing theories of cross-cultural similarities and differences *the validity of these inferential jumps is often threatened by crosscultural biases and inequivalence *the methodological strengths and weaknesses of exploratory and hypothesis-testing studies mirror each other *the main strength of exploratory studies is their broad scope for identifying crosscultural similarities and differences *main weakness = limited capacity to address the causes of the observed differences Presence or Absence of Contextual Factors... Second Dimension *contextual factors may involve characteristics of the participants (socioeconomic, age, status, education factors) or their cultures (religious institutions, economic development) *from a metholodigical perspective... contextual factors involve any variable that can explain, partly or fully, observed cross-cultural differences *using contextual factors will increase validity, and help rule out influence of biases and ineqvuialence *hypothesis-testing studies generally need to include contextual variables Structure vs. Level Orientated... Third Dimensions *Structure Orientated = comparisons of constructs (eg. is depression conceptualized the same way across culture), their structures (can depression be assessed by the same constituent elements in different cultures), or their relationships with other constructs *Level Orientated Studies involves comparison of scores (do individuals from different cultures show the same level of depression?) *structure orientated focuses on relationships among variables and identifies simialarities and differences in these relations across cultures *level-orientated studies ask whether people of different cultures have different mean levels of different variables Individual vs. Ecological (Cultural Level) Fourth Dimension *individual level studies are the typical type of study in psychology - in which individual participants provide data and are the unit of analysis *Ecological or cultural level studies use countries or cultures as the unit of analysis *just showing a difference between two cultural groups does not demonstrate that the difference occurs because of any cultural differences between them *thus researchers became interested in identifying the kinds of psychological dimensions that underlie cultures in order to better understand cultures on a subjective level *the most well-known ecological-level study of culture is Hofstede s seminal work Which resulted in his four dimensions are: 1) Individualism vs. Collectivism 2) Power Distance 3) Uncertainty Avoidance 4) Masculinity versus Femininity Orientation

3 *he included a fifth dimension called... Long- versus Short-term Orientation *in recent years, individual and cultural-level data have been combined in what are known as multi-level studies *these are studies that use data from two or more levels and incorporate the use of sophisticated statistical techniques that examine the relationship of data at only one level to data at another Designing Cross-Cultural Comparative Research: Getting the Right Research Question... *by far the most important part of any study, cross-cultural or not is knowing what research questions to ask in the first place *it happens all too often that researchers exclusively focus on designing the methodology of a study without considering adeqautely what research question should be addressed in the first place *one of the major challenges that face cross-cultural researchers today concerns how to isolate the source of differences between cultures, and identify the active cultural ingredients that produced those differences *it is the empirical documentation of those active cultural ingredients that cross-cultural research designs need to play close attention to *once the active cultural ingredients that produce differences are identified there is a level of analysis issue - cultural variables exist on the group and individual levels *and studies themselves can be entirely on the individual or cultural level or involve a mixture of the two in varying degrees with multiple levels *different variables at different levels of analysis bring with them different theoretical and methodological implications and require different interpretations of the research literature *a commonly held view that culture produces differences in a fairly top-down fashion is a theoretical bias held by many Designs that Establish Linkages Between Culture and Individual Mental Processes and Behaviors *two types of linkage studies... that attempt to empirically establish linkages between the contents of culture and the variables of interest in the study Unpacking Studies are extensions of basic cross-cultural comparisons, but include the measurement of a variable (contextual factor) that assesses the contents of the culture that are thought to produce the differences on the variable being compared across cultures -culture like an onion, layers need to be peeled off until nothing left *here cultural as an unspecified variable is replaced by more specific variables in order to truly explain cultural differences - these variables are called context variables- and should be measured to examine the degree to which they can account for differences. - any variable that is thought to vary on the cultural level and that may be thought to affect psychological processes can be used as context variables. Below all are contextual variables that are important in linkage studies Individual-Level Measures of Culture (is a contextual variable) these are measures that assess a variable on the individual level that is thought to be a product of culture *the most common dimension of culture operationalized on the individual level is

4 Individualism versus Collectivism *Hui developed the individualism-collectivism (INDCOL) scale to measure an individual s IC tendencies in relation to six collectivities (spouse, parents and children, kin, neighbors, friends and coworkers and classmates) *researchers viewed IC as a cultural syndrome that includes values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors *they treated the various psychological domains of subjective culture as an entire collective rather than as separate aspects of culture *on the individual level... triandis reefers to individualism and collectivism as ideocentrism and allocentrism Horizontal Collectivism individuals see themselves as members of in groups in which all members are equal Vertical Collectivism individuals see themselves as members of ingroups that are characterized by hierarchal or status relationships Horizontal Individualism individuals are autonomous and equal Vertical Individualsim individuals are autonomous but unequal Self-Construal Scales: *indiviualistic and collectivistic cultures differed in the kinds of self-concepts they fostered, with individualistic cultures encouraging the development of independent selfconstrual and collectivistic cultures encouraging the development of interdependent self-construals *this led to development of scales measuring independence and interdependence on the individual level, most notably the self-construal scale Personality: *cultural differences may be a product of different levels of personality traits in each culture *U.S., Australia, and New Zealand for example are noted for their relatively high degree of extraversion *France, Italy and the French Swiss are associated with high levels of neuroticism *he demonstrated that the personality traits known as extraversion, neuroticism and conscientiousness were linked to emotion regulation and accounted for cultural differences in it *thus what were apparent cultural differences on a variable could be explained by differences in aggregate levels of personality between the two cultures studied Cultural Practises... *found that Americans and Japanese were different in their liking of others - differences in liking were linked to different cultural practises Americans liked other they thought were similar to them or shared their own views Japanese liking was related to familiarity and interdependence with others Experiments *studies in which researchers create conditions to establish cause-effect relationships 1) Priming Studies are those that involve experimentally manipulating the mindsets of participants and measuring the resulting changes in behavior (triads, goto 1995) *in a priming study.. individuals who were primed privately, that is to think about how different they are form others produced more individually orientated responses regardless of whether they were American or Chinese

5 - likewise, those who were primed collectively that is to think about how they were similar to others produced more group-orientated responses, regardless of whether they were American or Chinese 2) Behavioural Studies manipulations of the actual environments and the observation of changes in behaviors as a function of these environments One study showed: participants took part in a study in which they could cooperate with others by giving money to them, either with a sanctioning system that provided for punishments or without such a system - the results indicated that high trusters did indeed cooperate more than low trusters without the sanctioning system, when the sanctioning system was in effect, however, low trusters cooperated more than did the high trusters *the same results were found in both Americans and Japanese Bias and Equivalence *in designing and evaluation cross-cultural research, no concepts are more important than equivalence and bias Bias = differences that do not have exactly the same meaning within and across cultures Equivalence = is a state or condition of similarity in conceptual meaning and empirical method between cultures that allows comparisons to be meaningful Bias refers to a state of non-equivalence and equivalence refers to a state of no-bias *apples in one culture can only be compared to apples in another culture Conceptual Bias a major concern of cross-cultural research is the equivalence in meaning of the overall theoretical framework being tested and the specific hypotheses being addressed in the first place - if these are not equivalent there is conceptual bias and the data are not comparable because they mean different things Method Bias: Samplng Bias two issues regarding sampling bias 1) Concerns whether the samples are appropriate representatives of their culture - it is important for cross-cultural researchers and consumers of that research to recognize that sound cross-cultural comparisons would entail the collection of data from multiple sites within the same cultural group 2) Concerns whether the samples are equivalent on noncultural demographic variables, such as age, sex, religion, socioeconomic status, work, and other characteristics Linguistic Bias: *a conceptual problem arises in cross-cultural research in that some noncultural demographic characteristics are inextricably intertwined with culture such that researchers cannot hold them constant across samples in a comparison *for instance being catholic in the U.S. does not mean the same thing as being catholic in Mexico - thus presumed cultural differences often reflect religious differences across samples as well - the same is often true for socioeconomic status

6 *cross-cultural research is unique because it often involves collecting data in multiple languages Linguistic bias refers to whether the research protocols items on questionnaires, instructions, etc. used in a cross-cultural study are semantically equivalent across the various languages included in the study *generally two procedures used to establish linguistics equivalence 1) back translation taking the research protocol in one language, translating it to the other language and having someone else translate it back to the original *if the back-translated version is the same as the original, they are generally considered equivalent *the original language is decentered through this process that is culture specific meanings and connotations are gradually eliminated from the research protocols so that what remains is something that is closest semantic equivalent in each language 2) Committee approach several bilingual informants collectively translate a research protocol into a target language - the product of this process reflects a translation that is the shared consensus of a linguistically equivalent protocol across languages and cultures Procedural Bias: *the issue of bias and equivalence also applies to the procedures used to collect data in different cultures *laboratory or field, day or night, questionnaire or observation all these decisions may have different meanings in different cultures *cross-cultural researchers need to confront these differences in their work and establish procedures, environments and settings that are equivalent across the cultures being compared Measurement Bias refers to the degree to which measures used to collect data in different cultures are equally valid and reliable *linguistic equivalence alone, does not guarantee measurement equivalence - even if two words being used in the two languages are the same, there is no guaruntee that those words have exactly the same meaning, with the same nuances in the two cultures *it is difficult to find exact translation equivalents of most words *thus cross-cultural researchers need to be concerned with measurement equivalence in addition to linguistic equivalence *if a concept means different things to people of different cultures or if it is measured in different ways in different cultures, then comparisons are meaningless *researchers often use a technique called factor analysis to examine the structure of a questionnaire Factor analysis creates groups of the items on a questionaire based on how the responses to them are related to each other *the groups, called factors are thought to represent different mental constructs in the minds of the participants responding to the items *if the same groups of items or factors would emerge in different cultures, then the measure is said to have structural equivalence - that is one way which psychometric equivalence can be ascertained *another way psychometric equivalence can be ascertained is by examining the internal reliability of the measures across cultures which is assess by examining whether the items on a questionaire are all related

7 to each other Response Bias is a systematic tendency to respond in a certain way to items or scales *different cultures can promote different types of response biases - when response biases exist it is very difficult to compare data between cultures, because it is not clear whether the differences refer to true differences in what is being measured or are merely differneces in how people respond using scales Social Desriability Responding tendency to give answers that make onself look good - may be that people of certain cultures have greater concerns that lead them to respond in socially desirable ways than people of other cultures two facets here: self-deceptive enhancement and impression management *individuals with more individualistic culture orientations engaged in more self-deceptive enhancement, while individuals with more collectivistic orientations engaged in more impression management *in a related vein, it was found that differences between American and Japanese university students individualistic versus collectivistic cultural orientations disappeared once socially desirable responding was statistically controlled Acquiescence bias another form of response bias - tendency to agree rather than disagree with items on questionaires Extreme Response Bias tendency to use the ends of a scale regardless of item content *countries near the Meditteranean exhibited more of both acqueiscence bias and extreme response bias than countries in northwestern Europe - their degree of the two response biases were not correlated with national differences in rates of actual behaviours Reference Group Effect people make implicit social comparisons with others when making ratings on scales, rather than relying on direct inferences about a private, personal value system *on one hand... extreme response bias occured more in cultures that encourage masculinity, power and status - on the other hand, respondents from individualistic cultures were less likely to engage in acquiescence bias, probably because maintaing harmony and conveying agreeableness and deference are less emphasized in these cultures Interpertational Bias Dealing with Nonequivalent Data: *it is nearly impossible to create any cross-cultural study that means exactly the same thing to all participating cultures, both conceptually and empirically *the following outlines four different ways to handle the problem of nonequivalent data: 1) Preclude comparison not make the comparison in the first place, concluding it would be meaningless 2) Reduce the nonequivalnece in the data many researchers take steps to identify equivalent and nonequivalent parts of their methods and then refocus their comparisons solely on the equivalent parts

8 3) Interpret the nonequivalence as an important peive of ino concerning cultural differneces 4) Ignore the nonequivalence unfortunately, what many cross-cultural researchers end up doing is simply ignoring the problem, clinging to beliefs concerning scale invariance across cultures despite a lack of evidence to support those beliefs Interpreting Findings: Cultural Attribution Fallacies which ooccur when researchers claim that between-group differences are cultural when they really have no empirical justification to do so

Culture & Personality. Outline. How Do We Compare? Kimberley A. Clow. What is Culture Approaches to Culture. Summary. Comparative Approach

Culture & Personality. Outline. How Do We Compare? Kimberley A. Clow. What is Culture Approaches to Culture. Summary. Comparative Approach Culture & Personality Kimberley A. Clow kclow2@uwo.ca http://instruct.uwo.ca/psychology/257e-570 Office Hour: Thursdays 2-3pm Office: S302 Outline What is Culture Approaches to Culture Comparative Approach