Week 2 cross cultural Flashcards
what is culture?
culture influences how individuals perceive and express themselves in the world; therefore all individuals (including students, clients, researchers, professors, etc.) are cultural beings.
Culture is fluid and is influenced by individual characteristics and history as well as daily events and experiences.
Culture is passed on and shared through socialisation experiences, via familial as well as non-familial communities, through shared values, beliefs, principles, behaviours, and practices.
Culture refers to the collective norms, beliefs and values that individuals hold.
what ways can cross cultural psychology research how behaviour is influenced by a persons cultural context?
this can be done in two ways: (a) by examining one cultural group, or (b) by comparing people from two more cultural groups.
We need to understand what we mean by “culture” and whether there can be a true culture as almost every country in the world includes people who have migrated, either internally or across countries. So, sampling is an issue we need to consider the cultural influence on behaviour.
what is a qualitative approach, and the benefits/limitations to this approach in cross cultural context?
Can be a single case study; a single cultural group; or multiple groups from different cultural backgrounds.
Individual, interviews, focus groups
Yields rich data
Can be conducted in different languages
Ensure interpretation is appropriate
interpretation of data in a culturally appropriate way.
compare different cultural groups
limitations
slow process
a lot of time
small number
what does a qualitative approach involve? a what are the benifits/limitation in a cross cultural context?
surveys often not culturally valid (limitation)
Advantages allows to gather lots of information from lots of people.
can use both approaches to confirm data.
limitations?
Survey; issues of translation; ensure measure has been validated cross-culturally
Are existing measures culturally valid?
If not, how accurate is the data that you obtain?
How accurate then is the interpretation?
Cultural factors cannot be controlled by researchers, so we have to examine their influence on the test results.
What are the challenges in finding culturally relevant studies to develop a rationale for your study?
hard to know if the measures used to gather data, actually measured the information accurately, are very validated cross culturally.
How would you ensure you design a study that considers the coping strategies of people from different cultures?
use a study design that involves both a quantitative and qualitative approach
What precautions should researchers undertake while developing theories that are relevant to different cultural groups?
measuring one group and generalizing it to all or other groups of people might be inaccurate as the measuments and assessments are only relevant to that group.
not valid to explain why people behave differently (eg people expressing emotions, its not because people don`t know how to smile/cry, but maybe culture has influences to whether they are comfortable expressing their emotions infront of other people.
need to account for cultural differences in the explanation of peoples behaviour.
What are the implications of culturally invalid tests on the assumptions about people’s behaviour. List at least three.
- wrong information about other groups of people
- assumptions are made about cultural groups (such as one group is more intelligent then another)
- money and interventions put in-place following inaccurate research because of not culturally valid measurements.
Ethical and methodological issues in cross cultural research (Berry et al., 2011):
what we know:
Early intelligence tests and interpretations: Porteus (1937) maze tests. their were differences in the maze test and their were differences in performances. he assumed that particular groups has a lower level of intelligence.
three factors how measure construct such as intelligence.
eg. depends on education, other impacts that result.
- Assumptions of equivalence
- Cultural bias
- Group (culture) level differences versus individual-level differences: aggregation of data to derive a group norm
Use of culturally appropriate testing tools
Do not generalise the relevance of tests across all cultures
•Interpret data accurately
need to be explicit with the information. ensure don`t generalize. careful of the conclusions.
•Can the concept be measured in a similar way across all cultures?
•Difference between Performance, Competence, and Processes
-use the right type of tests, if they dont understand the questions then how accurately are we acutely measuring their performance? if they cant speak English and the test is in English then their competence is deminished becasue they dont have the english language. therefore performance is comprimised.
•Problem of over-generalization: when representation is poor
presume that people across different cultures act and behave in the same way
According to Liamputtong (2008), there are methodological and ethical challenges in doing cross-cultural research:
1.Cultural sensitivity
-approach a cultural topic in a particular group., eg sexual violence (how approach sensitively?)
option whether they want to answer questions.
- Language issues and bicultural researchers
- interpret the questioners accurately
- people who have knowledge about that particular culture - Accessing participants
- hard to get people from ethnic minority group
- compensate them for their efforts - Moral and ethical issues
-what are they
do I have enough knowledge about their culture group, can you conduct research in a sensitive way?
-what conclusions, are we going to degrade a group from findings? cause more damage? or is it going to uplift their group or community? what it to be beneficial. - Is informed consent truly possible in cross-cultural research?
- have to be fully aware
- their is a challenge because need to know that the participant actually understand what they are signing up for and what they are taking part it. they need to be able to provide time for questions and a plain language statement in different languages.
what is etic approaches of examining culture-specific behaviours?
- studies behaviour from a position outside the system
- examine many cultures, comparing them
- structure created by the analyst
- criteria are considered absolute or universal
etic refers to the process of finding behaviours, beliefs, and values that are similar across cultures. With this approach, researchers try to develop a theory of humanity by examining cultures through an external lens and exploring the connections among cultures.
what is emic approaches of examining culture-specific behaviours?
Emic – refers to the study of behaviours and norms within a culture to examine which aspects are important to that culture.
- studies behaviour from within the system
- examines only one culture
- structure discovered by the analyst
- criteria are relative to internal characteristics
There are differences in the interpretation of behaviours and concepts across cultures. For example, concept of “self-reliance” may be understood differently in the USA compared to Japan. Triandis et al. (1993) found that for Americans who live in a mainly individualistic culture, the term related to “I want to do my own thing,” whereas in Japan, it related to “I want to be responsible, and not be a burden on my collective” (p.368).
We also have to be aware of “imposed etics” when observing behaviours of other cultures as we may impose our own values in interpreting behaviour.
Since a considerable amount of cross-cultural research has been conducted with a Western perspective, most cross-cultural comparisons have a Western perspective and therefore, these interpretations of behaviour may not be accurate (Mio, 2005).
