Methods an bias Flashcards
Types of studies
- Validations studies
- Indigenous cultural studies
- Cross-cultural comparisons
Validations studies
Equivalence of measure; personality, intelligence –> does the test work across different cultural settings
Indigenous cultural studies
In depth analyses; parenting
Cross-cultural comparisons
To test differences across different cultures
Features of studies
- exploratory/hypothesis testing
- Presence/absence of contextual factors
- structure/level-oriented
- individual/ecological level of analysis
Exploratory/hypothesis testing
- you can explore something
- you can set out to test a specific hypothesis (big five)
Presence/absence of contextual factors
- this has to do with how we treat culture in our study
- this provides the explanatory power that we’re looking for
Individual/ecological level of analysis
- we can look at different levels of analysis
- like a child, the classroom, the school, schools in different countries
Ecological fallacy
Misinterpretation of information and data
- inferences on individuals based on aggregated country-level data
- but: distributions overlap
- the differences within groups can be larger than the differences between groups
- thinking in dichotomies
Cultural essentialism
- categorizations
- essential beliefs extended to category
- essentialist beliefs
Essentialist beliefs
basis for prejudice: placing people in boxed beacause you think everybody from the same culture is the same
Cultural essentialism items
- culture is a central aspect of a person’s personality, it defines who are you
- people who belong to a different culture are a distinct type of person
- culture is a central aspect of a person’s personality, it defines who you are
Three theoretical positions on bias in research
Absolutism
Relativism
Universalism
Absolutism
Psychology is everywhere the same –> not applicable here
Relativism
Underlying processes are different –> voice of reason in differences
Universalism
Underlying processes are the same, expressions may be different
Qualitative research
- ecologically appropriate contect, field research
- interpretation relevant
- challanging to formalize procedures
Quotative research
- of quantative?
- independent and dependent variables
- quasi-experiments
- difficult to control confounds
- post hoc interpretation
Mixed method research
- qualitative methods display their main strenght in the context of discovery
–> helpful to get information about various cultural characteristics of an ethnic group we are dealing with for the first tme, to bould models, and generate hypotheses - quantitative methods are particularly strong in context of justification, testing procedures/ hypotheses
- so, there is complementarity
Three types of bias
- contruct bias
- method bias
- item bias
Three levels of equivalence
- construct equivalence
- measurement/metric equivalence
- full score equivalence
–> strategies to minimize bias and achieve equivalence
What is Bias
Systematic errors that endanger the comparability of results across cultures/groups
What is equivalence
- the level of comparability across cultures/groups
- e.g., measures of distance: miles vs. kilometers
- target: conversion of scores to be equivalent
Purpose of bias and equivalence
- Bias is not error or noise, but meaningful, systematic variation we do not understand yet
- bias is a confound, and we need to take it into consideration to address (or adjust) our research question
- bias points to a real cultural difference
Construct bias
The construct measured is not identical across cultures/groups
–> happiness in Western and non-Western contexts
- acknowledge incompleteness of construct
- sample all relevant behaviours of construct across cultures
Method bias
Bias stemming from: sampling, instrument and administration
- method bias can be mistaken as cultural differences
–> social desirability lower in online reports
Sample bias
- cross-cultural variation in simple characteristic: influence on target measures
–> ignore gender, educational differences
–> most research carries out on students. are these populations caparable?
Instrument bias
Stimulus familiarity
–> Chinese children outperforme Greek children on tasks of visual-spatial processing
Response styles
acquescence, Yay-sayers
- index of positive over negative categories of a scale
- more endorsed by people with low SES from collectivistic contexts (= observation, not explanation!)
- extremity responding (asia < west)
Administration bias
- administration conditions
- ambiguous instructions
- interaction between administrator and respondents (match/mismatch, status)
- communication problems
Item bias
- an item is biased when it has a different psychological meaning across cultures
- applicability
- cultural connotations
- translation
Equivalence in bias
- Construct equivalence: free of construct bias
- measurements unit equivalence: conversion needed
- full score equivalence: bias free
–> equivalence is related to the measurement level at which scores obtained in different cultural groups can be compared
A hierarchical classification of equivalence
- construct equivalence: free of construct bias
- measurements unit equivalence: conversion needed
- full score equivalence: bias free
Steps to minimize bias
Design: how can I make my study culturally appropriate?
Implementation: how can I conduct my study in a culturally appropriate way?
Analysis: do my items behave differently?
Ethnocentrism
- Everyday biases and fallacies
Bias: ethnocentrism
Tendency to use one’s own group’s standards as the standard when viewing other groups, to place one’s group at the top of a hierarchy and to rank all others as lower
Ethnocentrism ans test application
- remember the 96%
- borrowing tests (and concepts) from the West
- test norms do not apply
- research topics differ
Language - evaluation bias
- no distinction between objective description and subjective evaluation - no neutral words for people
- naïve vs idealistic
- names and ethnic group: black/negro/n-word/African American –> Turkish-Dutch =/= Dutch Turks
- allochton vs autochton
–> ethnicity
Ethnicity
… indicated cultural heritage, the experence shared by people who have a common ancestral origin, language, traditions, and often religion and geographic territory
Things can get complicated - just add nationality and religious affiliation
Race
Differentiations based on similar, genetically transmitted physical characteristics
- race applies in the US when flying
- race is a socially constructed category
Assimilation bias
–> belief perseverance effect
Culture (as a pair of glasses) can be expressed as cognitive schemas that help us organize information
–> what happens when we encounter information that does not fit our schema?
- assimilation –> changing the data = belief perseverance effect = exception/subtyping
- accommodation –> changing the schema
Examples of assimilation and accomodation
Schema: African people are lazy
Conflict: you meet a successful African businessman
- Assimilation: that’s only becaus of his political friends (changing data)
- accommodation: it seems that Africans are nor lazy per se (changing schema)
Fundamental attribution error
Tendency to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviours observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences
- in wich context would it be more opportune to attend to situational aspects over dispositional aspects?
- the fundamental attribution error is smaller in prototypically interdependent (collectivistic) context
Self-fulfiilling prophecies
Expectation created reality
–> expectations > communicate those expectations (cues) > people respond by adjusting behavior > original expectation becomes true
- expectations influence behavior of others: self-stereotyping/low-effort syndrome
