1. CONDUCTING CROSS- CULTURAL RESEARCH PSYC 335

2. LECTURE OVERVIEW * What is cross-cultural psychology? * Why do we need cross-cultural research? * Emic and etic approaches to understanding culture and psychology

3. LECTURE OVERVIEW (cont) Undertaking cross-cultural comparisons: The issue of equivalence – Stimuli – Conceptual – Linguistic – Functional – Metric

4. LECTURE OVERVIEW (cont) Comparative Approaches – Replication – Differences anticipated – Direction of differences predicted – Direction and magnitude of differences predicted – Interactions between “culture” and independent variables predicted

5. CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY is concerned with the systematic study of behaviour and experiences as it occurs in different cultures, is influenced by culture or results in changes in existing cultures (Triandis, 1980)

6. EMIC AND ETIC APPROACHES Emic approaches: culture specific, seek to understand culture in its own terms Etic approaches: culture-general, comparative, seeks to explore universals and uses culture as an “independent variable”

7. STIMULI EQUIVALENCE Appropriateness of stimuli/test materials; equivalent familiarity (or unfamiliarity) with test materials across cultural groups

8. THE CHITLIN TEST By Adrian Dove

9. WHICH WORD IS MOST OUT OF PLACE? A) Splib B) Blood C) Gray D) Spook E) Black

10. HOW LONG DO YOU HAVE TO COOK CHITLINS SO THAT THEY WILL NOT BE RUBBERY? One hour 15 minutes 6 hours 24 hours One week

11. CONCEPTUAL EQUIVALENCE: The meaning or essence of a construct is the same or equivalent

12. CULTURAL CONCEPTIONS OF INTELLIGENCE Nzelu (Zambia)- wisdom Obugezi (Uganda)-stable, cautious, friendly Gnom (Kipsigis)- readiness to carry out tasks in the service of the community

13. IQ TEST Picture arrangement

14. CULTURAL CONCEPTIONS OF INTELLIGENCE Western tests may not adequately capture the notion of intelligence in other cultures

15. LINGUISTIC EQUIVALENCE * Appropriate translation of materials to ensure equivalence of meaning * Relates to both stimuli and conceptual equivalence

16. TRANSLATION METHODS * Back translation Individual translation Team translation

17. EXAMPLES OF TRANSLATIONS Outside a Hong Kong tailor shop….. In a Thai dry cleaners… In a Greek hotel… Ladies may have a fit upstairs Drop your trousers here for best results Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 am daily

18. EXAMPLES OF TRANSLATIONS At an Italian physician’s office…. Detour sign in Japan… In a Greek tailor shop… Lederer (1987) Specialist in women and other diseases Stop! Drive sideways Order your suits here; because of big rush we will execute customers in strict rotation

19. FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENCE: Exists when behaviours or processes compared serve the same or very similar functions across cultures

20. EXAMPLES OF FUNCTIONAL INEQUIVALENCE * Nonverbal behaviours such as gaze, proxemics, gestures * Agreements with statements such as “I like myself alot”

21. METRIC EQUIVALENCE: the same coherent psychometric properties found in two or more sets of data from different cultural groups (includes scalar equivalence)

22. METRIC CONSIDERATIONS * Reliability, validity * Factor structure, coefficient of congruence Scalar equivalence Item response theory Standardization

23. COMPARATIVE APPROACHES * Replication * Differences anticipated *Direction of differences predicted *Direction and magnitude of differences predicted *Interactions between culture and “IV” predicted

24. READING Bond, M. H. (n.d.) Doing social psychology research cross-culturally: Into the heart of darkness. In G, Brannigan, & M. Merrens (Eds.), The social psychologists. New York: McGraw Hill.