why is cross cultural research important

While the problems with global underrepresentation in psychology research have gained more attention in recent years, an updated analysis of top journals in the mid-2010s found that the vast majority of samples were still from Western, industrialized countries, with about 60 percent from the U.S. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files. Psychologists who conduct cross-cultural research investigate the richness of human psychological variation across the world, including points of consistency and divergence between populations with distinct cultural backgrounds, such as those in Western and East Asian countries. But in some cultures, or even in particular domains within cultures (such as the workplace), the importance placed on rules and norms and the pressure on people to follow them are greater than in other cultural contexts. Today, hundreds of colleges, universities, libraries, museums, and research institutions in the United States and other countries have full or partial access to the HRAF Collection of Ethnography. 523-31. Abstract and Figures. While happiness seems to be one of the most cross-culturally recognizable emotions in terms of individual expression, culture can influence how one thinks about happiness. To illustrate that strategy, let us turn to an example of a test of a causal explanation. These two are not only abstract, but they deal with information which is not usually discussed in conventional ethnographic topics. The growing concern of students, scholars, and the general public to understand ethnic conflict, cultural diversity, and global problems has generated a demand for educational and research programs emphasizing the worldwide, comparative study of human behavior and society. Scientists have also found that associations between personality traits and outcomes that appear in some cultures may not be universal. In addition to coded cultural variables, D-PLACE has linguistic and environmental data as well. 1991 recommend that we use both types of scale when we can). The world was divided into 60 culture areas (strata) and one case from each area was randomly chosen from a list of societies that met certain criteria (such as whether one of the ethnographers stayed for more than a year; having more than 1,000 pages of ethnography). This suggests that codes should be designed to tap very specific aspects of a phenomenon. HRAFs more text-basedBasic Guide to Cross-Cultural Researchremains on our home page. Still, if two things are causally related, they should be statistically associated. Psychological research that incorporates a more global sample of people provides insights into whether findings and models (such as those about the structure of personality or the nature of mental illness) are universal or not, the extent to which psychological phenomena and characteristics vary across cultures, and the potential reasons for these differences. These variables included the degree to which women had political roles, the importance of female gods, how easily women could get divorced, etc. These perspectives are often contrasted with science; here we To illustrate the procedure, let us consider a variable that seems rather straightforward: the degree to which a society has extended family households. 1. But it is not that difficult either, because ethnographers usually attend to basic economic, social, and political features of a society. If the household includes two or more families, i.e., if there is an extended family household, there will likely be two adults of each gender to perform the required tasks. Social Structure. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lagace, Robert O. Hope is double-edged; false hope can set you on a collision course with despair. Warfare, Sex Ratio, and Polygyny. Ethnology 13:197-206. This is true in physical as well as in the social sciences. Naroll, Raoul. It is randomly sampled from the Outline of Archaeological Traditions compiled by Peter Peregrine. Press release. New Haven: HRAF Press, pp. WebThe WEIRDness of Psychology What Is Cross-Cultural Psychology? Have decade-old recommendations for increasing the diversity of psychological samples been adopted? For example, suppose one is examining the possible relationship between male mortality rates in warfare and frequency of polygyny (see M. Ember 1974 for a test of the hypothesis that high male mortality in warfare should be associated with appreciable polygyny). (b) Maximum geographical dispersal: the cultures should be geographically representative of all major world areas and all major ecological settings. Subjects seemed to largely be sourced from the countries in which the researchers lived. Special issue, 1991. eHRAF Archaeology contains a representative sample of the worlds prehistoric traditions. By using the random sampling strategy, researchers can always add cases randomly to increase sample size. Because the HRAF Collections contain some special programs, such as immigrant and other subcultures in North America, the whole collection should not be considered a good sampling frame for scientific research. Sampling top psychology journals in the mid-2000s, psychologist Jeffrey Arnett observed that 96 percent of research subjects came from Western, industrialized countries that represented just 12 percent of the worlds population, and that about two-thirds were from the U.S. The only reason it might be necessary to examine all the cases is if some trait or custom occurs rarely or is only rarely described. FAX: 203-764-9404 AltaMira Press, 2009. Although these requirements may suggest that the researcher who searches for causes may need to act differently from other researchers, this is really not the case, as we shall see. The only criteria was that there had to be at least the equivalent of one ethnography. Frank W. Moore, ed. In many ways,WEIRD populations seem to be less representative of humans in general than non-WEIRD populations are. Using eHRAF is a relatively straightforward process. Of course, within each region, nation, or community, there is plenty of individual variation; people who share a culture never think and act in exactly the same way. If confidence in an explanation is required, a single cross-cultural test is not enough. Cross-Cultural Samples and Codes. It is precisely here that cross-cultural researchers usually resort to statistical tests of significance. The 710 categories are grouped into seventy-nine major subject divisions, each assigned a three-digit code ranging from 100 (Orientation) to 880 (Adolescence, Adulthood, and Old Age). The second recognizes that although all measurement is indirect, some measures are more direct than others. A newly designed measure might read something like this: Code extended family households as. Thus the collection for each culture may contain documents written by travelers, missionaries, colonial officials, traders, etc. Features of certain cultural groups, such as highly stable social networks, may also serve as protective factors against the risk of mental illness. 1979. Using the HRAF Collection of Ethnography in Conjunction With the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample and the Ethnographic Atlas. WebUnderstanding values is important in cross-cultural interactions. HRAFs system of organization and classification of source material presents information in a manner that significantly increases the usefulness of original source materials. But psychologists also compare groups at smaller scales, such as people from culturally distinct subpopulations or areas of the same country, or immigrants and non-immigrants. Finally, within each sub-region, more specific units are defined and assigned a number; these may be country entities, such as RD01 for Ukraine, or cultural units such as FL12 for the Maasai. Check with your librarian for the cultures found in your library.). WebBasic Premises The basic premise of Cross-Cultural Analysis is that statistical cross-cultural comparisons can be used to discover traits shared between cultures and generate ideas about cultural universals. Each category in the OCM includes a brief descriptive statement, indicating the range of information which may be classified under that category. Most of the time, we can fit those numbers into the word scale. (d) Special initiatives:from time to time HRAF undertook to build special kinds of collections such as: immigrant and other subcultures within North America; cities; and country files. Development of the HRAF Collections began with the belief that enduring generalizations about human behavior and culture will emerge from a wealth of knowledge about the ways in which the different peoples of the world live. The codes for the Ethnographic Atlas can now be found online in D-PLACE (https://d-place.org/). If there are no pertinent subject categories, 000 indicating non-classified data is applied. O Oceania The current study examines cross-cultural differences in the reminiscence bump between samples of 119 African American and 106 European American adults aged 40 and up. Usually there are multiple time and place foci, so it is important that a researcher attend to the need to choose exactly the right focus. We can stick to our insistence on the best measure and study only those societies for which a percentage is given. In the paper and fiche versions of the HRAF Collection of Ethnography all documents that contain information about a particular culture are grouped together in a collection for that culture. Thus, all the documents pertaining to African cultures are grouped together and their OWC begins with F. Each of the major regions is then subdivided, usually on a political basis, into sub-regions designated by the addition of a second letter: FF designates the country of Nigeria and its component cultural units, while SC indicates that the culture described is in the South American country of Colombia. Felipe Mercado Ed.D, MSW on May 6, 2023 in The Authentic Self. Ember, Melvin. Behavior Science Research 25:1-270; and Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember, Cross-Cultural Research Methods, 2nd eidtion. In education, cross-cultural research includes the application of The first is descriptive and deals with the prevalence or frequency of a trait: What percentage of the worlds societies practice polygyny? Or, we can choose not to do the study because we cant measure the concept exactly how we want to. Measures have to be specified for each variable in the hypothesis. A better research strategy may be to use other kinds of data outside of the HRAF Collection of Ethnography. The researcher who chooses a causal question needs to identify plausible explanations or theories to test and to decide on a strategy (for collecting and analyzing data) that could falsify or disconfirm explanations. hraf@yale.edu, * HRAF membership authentication required. It was drawn by choosing from C. Embers (1992) concordance of cross-cultural samples. So, if a result has a p-value of less than .01, this indicates that there is less than one chance in one hundred that the relationship observed is purely accidental. Melvin Ember and Carol R. Ember. As always, researchers are encouraged to inform HRAF of any salient material which might have escaped notice. If you are working on eHRAF, the A-Z Index can be found under either under Browse/Subjects or in Advanced Search when you press Add Subjects. There is also a list of OCMs organized by Major Subject and a list in OCM or numerical order. Reprinted with afterthoughts in Marriage, Family, and Kinship: Comparative Studies of Social Organization. There are many reasons that one cannot ever expect a perfect result. 1969. Unlike most cross-cultural samples, the HRAF Collection of Ethnography as a whole (including eHRAF) purposely tries to include ethnographic information for more than one time and more than one place. Personal names are intimately connected to a persons sense of self, relationships, and well-being. Cambridge, Mass. Phrases like almost all households are extended are clear indicators. Barry, Herbert III, and Alice Schlegel. For information on a given society with regard to male mortality in warfare, one would look in categories Mortality (165), Instigation of War (721), and Aftermath of Combat (727) and might find ethnographic material from 1890 indicating that many men died in warfare. Whiting, John W. M. (1954) The Cross-Cultural Method. In Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol. (Your library might not have the complete collection. For instance, few ethnographies contain information that would allow construction of an indicator of rainfall variability, pH of the soil, or number of minutes per day adults spend in housework. Materials from the paper files were processed into microfiche and issued in annual installments to participating institutions; Installment 42 was the last microfiche series issued to members. Using the HRAF collection of ethnography in conjunction with the standard cross-cultural sample and the ethnographic atlas. Some researchers find that the HRAF Collection of Ethnography speeds up their data retrieval so much that they use it for as many cultures as they can and then look up books and articles for the remaining cultures. We decided to read and code ethnography to measure incompatibility requirements first, before we knew what the household form was, and then we subsequently looked up previously published coded data on the presence or absence of extended family households. The online HRAF Cross-Cultural Concordance (first published as the Computerized Cross-Cultural Concordance see C. R. Ember 1992) was developed to help researchers see if times and places match across different samples. Understanding enables easier communication. It only specifies what scientists call the dependent variable (the thing to be explained). WebTodays employers are looking for entry-level employees with cross cultural adaptation skills. (c) Adequacy of literature: within the scope of the two preceding criteria, the cultures should have a quantitatively and qualitatively adequate literature coverage. People in relatively collectivist cultures are described as tending todefine themselves as parts of a group and to heed the norms and goals of the group. A better choice would be to use one of the subsets of eHRAF designed to be representative. The important thing to keep in mind in using information from two different samples is that the information in the different samples may pertain to different time periods and different communities. There are three choices. What requires work is evaluating whether an operational definition is useful or easily applied. Cross-cultural research: advantages and disadvantages. What kind of sample is eHRAF World Cultures as a whole? Each culture collection is identified by a unique alphanumeric code according to the Outline of World CulturesOWC (Murdock 1983) . Statisticians have devised various tests that tell us how perfect a result has to be for us to believe that there is probably an association between the variables of interest, that one variable generally predicts the other. This is because the rigor and trustworthiness of a qualitative study investigating an issue that has a cross-cultural dimension cannot be achieved without adapting and applying research methods in a culturally meaningful waywithout in-depth knowledge and understanding of the sociocultural and political dynamics of a particular Cross-cultural (worldwide comparative) researchers ask four kinds of questions. Beneath this statement is usually a list of cross-references to other categories under which related information may be classified. Cultural differences often vary between countries and regionsfrom the number of hours in the working day to the various processes that go into decision making. Measuring a concept like the degree to which a society has extended families may not be easy. could lead to gains in mental health treatment. So, for instance, if 70% of the households have extended families, and 30% are independent, we would choose scale position 3. - North Americans tend to make external attributions for failures, whereas Japanese make external attributions for successes. Which is the most important subsistence activity among food collectors gathering, hunting, or fishing? WebWhile any Cross Cultural Studies experience is valuable and broadening, those students who have been able to plan a semester abroad into their academic program will testify as to If using coded data from another sample pick the same foci in eHRAF Political opinion polls are a case in point. There is one exception to this system: Muslim societies in Africa are classified as being in the Middle East. These five were joined within the year by the University of Chicago, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Southern California. If researchers want to use some already coded data (coded previously by themselves or other researchers) for their study, they usually choose to limit themselves to those sample cases for which the desired precoded data are available. Sometimes an OCM will apply to a particular sentence, although most OCMs apply to at least a section of a paragraph. An example for men is working away from home for wages and having to plow the fields. HRAF processes an extensive set of sources for each society included in the archive. How Photos and Social Media Posts Wound Distanced Family Members. Cross-Cultural Research Methods, 2nd edition. Cross-cultural researchers must decide what societies to examine. Most importantly, researchers engaged in research that has a cross-cultural dimension ought to explain what they did, how they did it, and why they did it, with respect This brief guide takes you through the basic steps of a cross-cultural study using the HRAF Collection of Ethnography on paper, fiche, or online (eHRAF World Cultures). We based processing of sequences based on member interest.[/expand]. Worldwide Theory Testing. The psychological findings that get the most attention are disproportionately derived from a fraction of the worlds population. 109-124. The Proposed HRAF Probability Sample. Behavior Science Notes 2:70-80. The OCM consists of 710 subject categories plus a category numbered 000 for unclassified materials. Many have put their codes into the electronic journal World Cultures. The current study examines cross-cultural differences in the reminiscence bump between samples of 119 African American and 106 European American adults aged 40 and up. 6th revised edition with modifications 2008. AltaMira Press. The inhabitants of different regions and countries have a great deal in common: They build close social relationships, follow rules established by their communities, and engage in important rituals. Behavior Science Research, 14:211-229. Rather than postulating causes or consequences, a researcher may simply ask how a particular aspect of culture may be associated with some other aspect(s). This led us (and later Divale [1974]) to reject the theory that division of labor largely determines residence.

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