Cross-cultural analysis plan: interpretive and inferential problems 2

CHALLENGES AND PROBLEMS IN CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH
There are numerous methodological problems in cross-cultural research including: acquiring the needed linguistic and cultural skills and research funds; gaining access to field sites and data archives; defining and selecting comparable units; ensuring the representativeness of selected cases; and determining conceptual equivalence and measurement reliability and validity. These first two sets of problems are obvious, but not easily resolved. Cross-cultural analysis is costly in terms of time and money, and it usually demands at least a minimal level (and often much more) of education in the history, language, and culture of groups of people foreign to the researcher. The difficulties of gaining access to, and cooperation from, individuals and groups in cross-cultural research ”are always experienced but rarely acknowledged by comparative researchers” (Armer 1973, pp. 5859). Specific discussions of, and development of strategies for, gaining access are crucial because research can not begin without such access. Additionally, casual, insensitive, or ethnocentric presentation of self and research goals to foreign gatekeepers (officials, scholars, and those individuals directly studied) not only negatively affects the original study, but can also cause serious problems for others who plan future cross-cultural research (Form 1973; Portes 1973). Given the cultural isolation of many social scientists in the United States, it is not surprising that these practical problems have contributed to the lack of cross-cultural research in American sociology. However, the internationalization of the social sciences and the globalization of social and environmental issues are contributing to the gradual elimination of many of these practical problems (Sztompka 1988).
For the cross-cultural analysis of social psychological processes the unit of analysis is most often interactive events or individuals that are sampled from whole cultures or subunits such as communities or institutions (e.g., family, school, or workplace). The appropriateness of individuals as the basic unit of analysis has been a hotly debated issue in sociology. The problem is even more acute in cross-cultural analysis, especially in cultures ”that lack the individualistic, participatory characteristics of Western societies” (Armer 1983, p. 62). In addition to the special difficulties of representative, theoretical, or random sampling of cases (Elder 1973; Van Meter 1990), cross-cultural researchers must also deal with ”Galton’s problem.” According to the British statistician, Sir Francis Galton, ”valid comparison requires mutually independent and isolated cases, and therefore cultural diffusion, cultural contact, culture clash or outright conquest—with their consequent borrowing, imitation, migrations etc.—invalidates the results of comparative studies” (Sztompka 1988, p. 213). Although several researchers have presented strategies for dealing with Galton’s problem for correlational studies of data archives (see Naroll, Michik, and Naroll 1980), the problem of cultural diffusion is often overlooked in many quantitative and qualitative cross-cultural studies.