Examination in Research Methods

8/9/2019 Examination in Research Methods

1/27

1

CONCEPTS AND RESEARCH METHODS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 5:

CULTURALLY SENSITIVE RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHODS IN

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

By:

MUWAGA MUSA

NPM: 190220093001

PROGRAM MAGISTER PSIKOLOGI SOCIAL

FACULTY OF PSYCHOLOGY

UNIVERSITAS PADJADJARAN

BANDUNG 2010


2/27

2

INTRODUCTION

We use the word culture in many different ways in everyday language and discourse.

Sometimes we use the word culture to mean race, nationality, or ethnicity. For

example, we often refer to people of African American ancestry as coming from African

American culture, or Chinese people as coming from Chinese culture. But we also use

the word culture to reflect trends in music and art, food and clothing, rituals,

traditions, and heritage. In short, we use the word culture to refer to many different

things about peoplephysical and biological characteristics, behaviors, music, dance,

and other activities. Kroeber and Kluckholn (1952) and later Berry, Poortinga, Segall,

and Dasen (1992) have described six general categories in which culture is discussed;

descriptive, historical, normative, Psychological and Genetic .

It was once assumed that the bedrock concepts of social psychology held true for all the

world's peoples. More recently, post-modern approaches to research in the field have expanded

on these Western models, building a psychology that takes into account the sociopolitical,

historical, religious, ecological, and other indigenous factors that make every culture, as well as

every person as agents of their own actions. Indigenous and Cultural Psychology surveys

psychological and behavioral phenomena in native context in various developing and

developed countries, with particular focus on Asia.

An international team of 28 experts clarifies culture-specific concepts (such as paternalism and

the Japanese concept of amae), models integrative methods of study, and dispels typical

misconceptions about the field and its goals. The results reflect culturally sound frames of

reference while remaining rigorous, systematic, and verifiable. These approaches provide a

basis forthe discovery oftrue psychological universality if any that exists as under lying facts

.Cultural researchers are now offer levels, offering groundbreaking findings on understudied

concepts, and signaling future directions in universal knowledge in the fields of social

psychology.


3/27

3

Social psychology is distinguished by its attention to the power of the situation and to the

dynamics of social groups. Not only, but also highly sensitive to the active role ofthe observer

in making sense ofthe experience. However, even withthis sensitivity to group dynamics and

to the processes of individual constructiveness and making meaning of experience, the field

gives little attention to culture in its theories and methods. This work offers methodological

strategies for enhancing cultural sensitivity of social psychology as strategies are critically

increasing the fields theoretical power and its explanations in depth, as well as its applied

relevance. While emphasizing issues like sampling, choice of procedure, and interpretation of

findings.

It must be recalled that psychological experience always occurs in and is, in part, constituted

by sociocultural processes, resulting in a need to take culture into account in all research

designs, even in work conducted by single populations. There are many answers to the

questions why cultural values must be considered in social psychological research?

Chief among them is, there is need to pay attention to culture for methodological control

purposes, like individuals back ground, knowledge, and experiences or out looks that may

affect their understanding of methodological procedures not having equivalent meaning for

different subgroups.

The second motive for attending to cultural issues is for theory testing purposes. This type of

concern is guided by assessing the assumed universality of existing psychological theories

through sampling culturally diverse populations, as well as identifying mediating or

moderating variables that affectthe manifestation of particular psychological effects.

Culturally based research is also increasingly guided by theory construction goals. This type of

approach is concerned not merely with identifying diversity in modes of psychological

functioning but also with identifying the previously ignored or unrecognized cultural

dependence of existing theories. Its clear that previous cognitive and experimental

interpretations of age changes were incomplete and that it was critical to recognise cultural

processes as contributing to such age changes, and these developmental changes in social

attribution are culturally variable ratherthan universal as previously assumed.


4/27

4

In summary, taking cultural considerations into account in social psychological research is

needed not only for the methodological reasons of ensuring the validity of assessment

techniques , but also fortheoretical reasons oftesting the universality of psychological theories

and of formulating new conceptual models .Extending beyond merely an understanding of

diversity in psychological functioning , such attention can provide new process understanding

ofthe psychological functioning of widely studied western populations .

DOWN PLAYING OF CULTURAL ISSUES IN SOCISL PSYCHOLOGY

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in cultural issues in psychological research

though with limited emphasis. Whereas increasing efforts are being made to sample culturally

diverse subgroups, most contemporary social psychological research centers on middle-class,

college populations whichhave constituted social psychological inquiry.

To give increasing attention to sociocultural considerations in social psychology, its critical to

understand why culture tends to be down played in the field. Its this type of concern that must

be addressed to gain greater understanding of cultural process and their role in psychological

phenomenon as well as adopting a more culturally sensitive methodological strategy.

Reasons for downplaying culture in social psychological research

The reasons forthis occurrence in social psychology are both conceptual and empirical. These

factors reflect long standing assumptions in the field aboutthe nature of social psychological

explanations as well as disappointment with the findings from various traditions of culturally

based psychological research.

(a)Cultural-free approachto situationOne of the major contributions of social psychology is its emphasis of situations affecting

behavior. Its this insightthat underlies some ofthe early research documents whichhold that

situational influence can lead to antisocial behavior such as in milligram conformity

experiment (milligram 1963). In another example,

This type of insight also informs contemporary researchers on priming and

on the mere exposure effect, work that is documenting the power of the


5/27

5

situation to influence behavior in ways that are outside individuals

conscious awareness (kale and cornel 1990 ).

As approached with in this dominant perspective, the situation is treated as presenting a

veridical structure that can be known through inductive and deductive information processing.

Its assumed that validity in judgment arises from differences in the information available to

individuals or from differences in their informative processing, resulting in certain judgments

being more or less cognitive adequate or varied than others.

This view of situation gives rise to explanatory frameworks focused on factors in the situation

and in the person. Within such framework, culture is viewed merely as casual factor with

impacts on psychological findings rather than as a factor that its self contributes additional

explanatory force.

Equally culture may be treated as an individual difference, an attitude that is seen, as an

example enthusiasm shown for assessing culture through individualism/collectivism. From

such perspective, cultural group membership is viewed as giving rise to individual differences,

attitude, understanding, and consideration that already is taken into account in social

psychological explanation, throughthe fields present attention to individual differences.

(a)Physical science ideal explanation,The tendency to downplay cultural considerations stems from the fields embrace of an

idealized physical science model of explanation. Higgin and krunglanski (1996) explained this

type of stance involves a view of psychological science as the search for deep structural

explanatory mechanism.

A discovery of lawful principles governing nature of phenomenon is a

fundamental objective of scientific research not only that, but also a usefulscientific analysis needs of probe beneaththe surface. In other words, it needs to

get away from the phonotypic manifestation and strive to unearth genotypes that

may luck beneath.


6/27

6

In adopting this vision as a dominant research paradigm, social psychology has a tendency to

consider cultural consideration as mere content effects and thus factors that ideally should be

held constant in order to focus on isolating more fundamental underlying psychological

mechanism. (Malpass 1988)

(c)Apparent universality and explanatory breadth of psychological theories

The limited interest shown in cultural research with in social psychology also reflects the

sense within the discipline that social psychological findings, in fact, have been documented in

most cases to be cross culturally robust and to have considerable explanatory scope. Its thus

concluded that there is no cultural differences that exists in basic psychological phenomenon

(Brown, 1991).

The conclusion in apparent universality in cross culture research is linked with methodological

strategies of administering existing research instruments in diverse culture settings, after

making only minor changes in their contentto ensure familiarity, and narrowing the scope of

phenomenon being investigated in ways that exclude possibly significant cultural variations.

An example of the strategy of adopting methodological procedures arguably exclude

potentially significant sources of variations may be seen in research of coding of emotional

facial expression. The widely accepted conclusion of fundamental similarity in basic emotions

concepts that have emerged from extensive cross culture research conducted on this topic.

(Ekiman 1992; Izard 1992) stems, at least in part, from the use of procedure thattend to gloss

over potentially significant sources of variations in emotion concepts, such as how different

emotions are expressed in everyday language usage, and that downplay the significance of

localized emotion terms whose translation into English language are inaccurate .

(d) Disappointment with recent cultural traditions of research

Downplaying the significance of cultural research also reflects certain confusion with cultural

research that was stimulated by markus and kitayamas (1991) there articles are the widely

cited in social psychology and it has given rise to extensive research with the focus of

examining the extentto which variation in psychological functioning can be predicted by scale

measures.


7/27

7

However, recent criticisms ofthis rapidly growing literature make clear the results observed

utilizing scale measures of independent/interdependent self-construals have been

disappointing (Hong , morris chiu 2000,2002) much of the work has been associated with

stereotypical stance that gloss over important distinction between and within cultures and that

gives insufficient attention to the impact of context behavior .The same type of sophisticated

understanding of situational influences that is evident in main stream social psychology

research is not evident in this type of social psychological work , which much of is focused on

cultural questions. Notably, work in this tradition is also yielding findings that, in some cases,

appear to contradict directly the claims of the interdependent/independent self-construal

paradigm.

CONCEPTUAL ISSUES IN GIVING MORE ATTENTION TO CULTURE,

Before turning directly to these methodological strategies, there is need to pay attention to

conceptual issues that respond to some of the reasons for the fields downplaying of culture

noted, these consideration bear on the nature of culture and its influence on psychological

processes.

Cultural views

From an ecological view, culture is unders

tood as adop

tions

to

the varying requiremen

ts of

contrasting physical and social structural environment .Ecological approaches to culture are of

value in highlighting the varied resources and constraints that individual of different social

cultural communities experience and that influence their behaviors. It may be noted, that

whereas ecological approaches to culture extend the dominant social psychology models in

their recognition thatthe adaptive context for psychological development is culturally variable,

rather than universal, these approaches retain a view of the context as an objective

environment. In this respect, such approaches do not challenge the traditional social

psychology explanatory focus on features ofthe person and the objective situation.

Its important to compliment ecological approaches to culture with approaches that are

symbolically grounded. Symbolic approaches treat culture as shared meanings that are

embodied in artifacts and practices that form human development (Cole, 1995; R.A.Le Vine,

1984). Its recognised that cultural meanings and practices not only represent experience but


8/27

8

also construct experience in serving to create social realities (Bartlett 1932). Not do social

institutions depend on culture definitions but even psychological concepts are recognized.

Challenging the identification of cultural processes exclusively with the situational factors

taken into account in social psychological explanation, a symbolic approach to culture

highlights the need to recognise that cultural meanings do not bear one-to-one relationship to

objective aspects ofthe situation. Culture then cannot be understood merely by consideration

of particular objectives but instead requires taking into account cultural beliefs, values and

practices that are not purely functionally based.

Integrating cultural considerations with situational and person factors

It must be noted that cultural considerations complete but do not replace the focus onsituational and personal factors in social psychological explanation. This implies that

hypothesis involving cultural influences need to be formulated in ways thattake into account

both variations and human differences. Equally, it must be recognised that in many cases the

impact of individual differences and situational factors may themselves be culturally variable.

METHODOLOGICAL STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCING CULTURAL SENSITIVITY

The key to enhancing the cultural sensitivity of social psychology is to understand culture and

its role in psychological functioning. Attention must be paid to culture as ecological context

and presents certain objective affordance and constraints, as well as to culture as a symbolic

environmentthat entails certain meanings and practices that are not entirely functionally based.

it must be recognised that a consideration of culture does not replace an attention to person and

situational factors but contributes an additional dimension to social psychological explanation

Methodological strategies for enhancing cultural sensitivity, the strategies include those which

are important not only in comparative research but also in research that does not focus on

cultural questions and / or on tapping culturally diverse populations. Given the reality of

psychology, experience always occurring in specific context, sensitivity to cultural issues is

needed in all social psychological investigations.


9/27

9

(a) Cultural understanding,

In working to gain an understanding of cultural sensitivity that differ from the researchers

background, its importantto seek cultural knowledge that, as far as feasible and specific to the

particular group under consideration. This implies that researchers should avoid turning to the

widely utilized scale measures of individualism/collectivism to provide this kind of insight,

because ofthe limited cultural sensitivity of such measures (miller, 2002). Fortunately,

whereas some commitment is required on the part of the researcher to make the necessary

effort to acquire a greater understanding of other cultural view points, many strategies are

available for achieving this goal.

(1) One valuable strategy for obtaining knowledge about other cultures involvesdrawing from relevant research literature in related fields, such as anthropology and

sociolinguistic. One can see the same kind of knowledge as having informed

perspective adopted by Markus and Kitayama (1991) in their article on culture and

the self. Although they proposed a global distinction linked to individualism/

collectivism, the references cited in their article are grounded in interdisciplinary

research of Japan.

(2) Collaborating wi

tha member of

the comparison cul

tural communi

ty under

consideration. This represents another valuable strategy for gaining cultural

knowledge which may be particularly useful in cases in which there is little or no

available research literature on a particular community, ideally, such collaborations

should include researchers who have both inside and outside knowledge ofthe cultures

under consideration. Collaborations ofthis kind have been generative in recent cultural

research in social psychology, as illustrated by great numbers of studies being

conducted involving researchers drawn from United States and from various East Asian

cultural groups (J i and Nisbett 2000; Peng and Nisbett 1999)

(3) A form of organised small-group discussions, focus groups constitute small

groups that investigators assemble and engage in processes of informal group

discussions, as a means of tapping participants personal experience and reactions on

particulartopics (Powell and single, 1996 p, 499). The goal of focus groups is to make


10/27

10

possible the gathering of qualitative information regarding the attitudes, beliefs, and

feelings of participants as expressed within a group context. Focus group offer the

advantage of being highly flexible and can be employed effectively both to explore

general culture concerns and to tap respondents open-ended reactions to issues

identified as theoretical interest in a particular research program .

(b) Sampling

The growing need to understand cultural implications has influenced different types of

sampling strategy to be employed in the hunt for accurate data about cultures, the need to go

beyond samples has been emphasised in the national institute of healths recent report to

address minority inclusion as part of all currently submitted grant proposals. The following are

the sampling strategies to be employed to ensure accuracy and reliability of findings and to

make inferences that are of empirical findings.

(c)Noncomparative prototypic sampling strategy

This strategy is intended to manipulation situations or assessing individual difference, while

tapping population that is treated although its homogenous and can provide grounds for

making universal claims. In an effort to increase cultural sensitivity of this type of sampling

practice, its essential not only for researchers to acknowledge potential limitations on the

generality oftheir findings from this type of design but also to give greater conceptual attention

to the nature ofthese limitation . Its important for researchers to address what specific respects

a claim may be anticipated to be culturally bound or alternatively, in short, serious attention

needs to be given to the cultural meaning of research findings, even when employing sampling

design that are Noncomparative in nature and not explicitly focused on cultural questions.

Thus, whenever there are sufficiently large numbers of participants in different cultural

subgroups to make this easy, effort should be made to conduct separate analysis of effects

within subgroups to observe empirically whether similar results obtain in all cases. Its

recommended that subgroups be analysed at levels that are linked with cultural traditions and

that attend as well to issues of socioeconomic status. Its that analysis of this type be

undertaken in ways that are sensitive to areas of overlap and intermixing between subgroups.


11/27

11

(d)Noncomparative cultural sampling strategies

This applies to research that focus on cultural questions. These projects generally are

motivated either by a concern with obtaining normative data or by the methodological

requirements of particular research methodologies, such as ethnographic or case study

approaches.

Sampling of single cultural populations is increasingly being adopted in research as a means

of working expanding the normative baseline for psychological theory, with such efforts

encouraged by major U.S funding organisations, such as national science foundation (NSF)

and national institute of health (NIH), in their issuing of specific calls for research with

underrepresent

ed minorit

y populat

ions.It

is recognisedth

at

psych

ologicalth

eory caneffectively be made more culturally inclusive only when its descriptive base is broadened to

include information about psychological functioning in diverse cultural samples.

(e)Comparative cultural sampling strategy

This design is employed commonly in research that tests the universality of particular

psychological effects or that examines cultural variations in theories. In such work, its

important for sampling decisions to be culturally sensitive.

In utilizing comparative study to examine cultural influence on social psychological

phenomenon, greater consideration must be given to the distinctive nature of cultural

orientation. Equally, greater attention needs to be paid to the overlap of cultural perspectives.

Thus the concern with affection and respectthat Robin Harwood (1995) have found to central

to the outlooks on attachment as emphasised by Puerto Rican mothers differs not only in

balancing autonomy but also connectedness as emphasised among Euro-Americans and

assumed with in attachmenttheory.

Representativeness and equivalence in sampling

Although its importantto address concerns aboutthe anticipated cultural generality of results,

it must also be recognised that representativeness sampling is not an essential feature of


12/27

12

culturally based research designs, and with the exception of large scale surveys, its rarely

achieved in social psychology. This implies that researchers should not utilize representative

sampling as a criterion in evaluating culturally based psychology research because such

standards would lead to that kind of to rendered negative with the exception of large scale

survey designs.

As a way of criterion of samples being representative, however, concern needs to be given

to a achieving equivalence in the population tapped in the comparative studies and in

individuals responses to reach stimuli. To control for possible confounding preexisting

groups differences, use of statistical control is emphasised. The inclusion of control

samples in research design is a valuable strategy that may be employed in efforts to rule out

alternative interpretations of particular effects related to sampling ----a technique that is

particularly valuable in two group designs, given the many uncontrolled sources of

variation that may influence any effect.

Culture as a process

Social psychology has since emphasised the use of scale measure of independent

interdependent as well as other measures of collectivism/individualism as developed by

researchers in the tradition of cross- culture psychology. However, serious limitation exist in

both of these strategies, leaving a need to adopt more dynamic methodological approaches

measures of individualism/collectivism are also problematic in treating psychological

processes as bearing one-one cultural outlook ,as an attitude that fails to recognise the extent

to which behavior is normatively based rather than reflective of individual attitudes or

personality .

Its also problematic to utilize priming approaches to stimulate cultural processes and to

measure individualism/collectivism. Its not possible to interpret a particular behavioral

response, such as dispositional inference, that might be primed as reflective on an

individualistic or collectivist outlook without understanding other cultural meanings to which

the response is linked.

In an effortto understand culture, its recommended that researchers adopt process oriented

approach cultural (Greenfield, 1997). This includes tapping more directly the psychological


13/27

13

processes that are implicated in particular culturally variable psychological responses as well

as assessing the everyday cultural routines and practices that support such responses.

Methodological approaches that can tap the psychological processes underlying particular

effects include such strategies as assessing on line processing as well as identifying culturally

variable patterns of functional relationship (Katayama, 2002). On line processing involves

evaluating information immediately as its encountered and contrasts with the cognitive

processing based on long-term memory.

The use of on line processing, is intended to explore cultural influence illustrated in a recent

comparative study on the correspondence bias, an attribution tendency in which an individual

characters are seen as corresponding to his orher behaviors even when the behavior is socially

limited. This investigation not only demonstrated that Japanese respondents are less vulnerable

to this bias than are the U.S. respondents but also showed that this difference is linked to

contrasting types of online attitudinal inferences. The approach identifies also cultural variable

partners of functional relationships is illustrated in cross-culture research highlighting the

contrasting cultural meanings accorded to shyness, and it was demonstrated that whereas social

attitude tend to linked to negative outcomes in an American setting, its linked to positive

family and school outcomes with china (chen,Rubin, and li, 1995).

Culturally appropriate measures,

Its important to consider the sensitivity of cultural issues in social psychological research.

This sensitivity is a matter of ensuring that measures are equivalent in meaning for different

populations and that they are culturally informative. In terms of ensuring equivalence of

measuring instruments in different cultural or sub-cultural populations, its important not

merely to adopt such conventional strategies as the use of backtranslation but also to take into

account the contrasting expectations, social knowledge, values and modes of communication

maintained by individuals of different sub-cultural backgrounds.

Interestingly, this type of differences can lead various populations to experience difficulty in

responding to multiple choice questions. Thus in research among the Zinacantencan maya,

Greenfield and Childs (1977) observed that respondents with limited levels of education

treated the multiple options provided in questionnaire as partners to be puttogetherto create a


14/27

14

large meaning , ratherthan as a discreet options whose only function is to test understanding.

The social context of testing situation also may affect the level of comfort that individuals

experience in testing situations and their readiness to respond. Thus, social psychologists must

keep in mind that some populations from different sub-cultural background are more reluctant

to answer questions in a standard interviewing situation. (Delgado Gaitan , 1994; Greenfield

1997b).

In turn, to ensure cultural inclusiveness in research, its critically important to recognise that

many assessment instruments currently in use involve culturally specific assumptions and need

to be broadened conceptually co accommodate the diverse outlooks of contrasting cultural and

sub-cultural populations. Until this is done, the field will continue to yield results that luck

sufficient cultural sensitivity to tap the cultural variability that exists. The present

considerations highlightthe need for researchers to be more aware ofthe extentto which the

response options provided in questionnaire may luck sufficient cultural sensitivity to succeed

in tapping the outlooks of diverse cultural populations. Its also importantto utilize assessment

instruments that are less constraining of response options and more accommodating to diverse

cultural viewpoints.

Conclusion

In the final analysis, being more culturally in social psychological research is of much

importance. As Matsumoto (2001) recently commented all psychologists are cross cultural in

some way the difference is whetherthey are aware ofthe cultures being studied, and weather

these comparison is explicit or implicit in their work. Equally critical, is the need to overcome

the competency of social psychology whichhas resulted in relegating culture to a peripheral

role as a mare descriptive enterprise with little implication to the basic theories. Taking cultural

considerations into account in social psychology promises to yield a richer understanding of

basic psychological processes and of diversity of outlooks that characterize humanpsychological functioning.


15/27

15

REFERENCES

Adair, J., G., & Diaz Loving, R. (1999). Indigenous psychologies: The meaning ofthe

concepts and its assessment.

Applied Psychology: An International Review, 48(4), Special IssAllwood, C. M., & Berry, J.W. (in press). Origins and development of indigenous psychologies: An international analysis

International Journal of Psychology, Special Issue.ue.

Berry, J. W., Poortinga, Y. H., Segall, M. H., & Dasen, P. R. (2002). Cross-culturalpsychology:

Research and applications, Second Edition. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University.

Hermans, J. M., & Kempen, J. G. (1998). Moving cultures: The perilous problem of cultural

dichotomy in a globalized society.American Psychologist, 53, 1111-1120.

Triandis, H. C. (2000). Dialectics between cultural and cross-cultural psychology.Asian

Journal of Social Psychology, 3, 185-196.

Shams, M. & Hwang, K. K. (2005). Responses to Epistemological Challenges to IndigenousPsychologies .Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 8(1), Special Issue.

Henrich, J. and R. Boyd, The evolution of conformisttransmission and the emergence of

between-group differences. (1998)Evolution and Human Behavior, 19, 215242


16/27

16


17/27

17


18/27

18


19/27

19


20/27

20


21/27

21


22/27

22


23/27

23


24/27

24


25/27

25


26/27

26


27/27

Documents

Examination in Research Methods