Cross-Cultural Research Methods in Psychology

David Matsumoto · Fons J. R. van de Vijver

Oct 2010 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

Cross-cultural research is now an undeniable part of mainstream psychology and has had a major impact on conceptual models of human behavior. Although it is true that the basic principles of social psychological methodology and data analysis are applicable to cross-cultural research, there are a number of issues that are distinct to it, including managing incongruities of language and quantifying cultural response sets in the use of scales. Cross-Cultural Research Methods in Psychology provides state-of-the-art knowledge about the methodological problems that need to be addressed if a researcher is to conduct valid and reliable cross-cultural research. It also offers practical advice and examples of solutions to those problems and is a must-read for any student of culture.

About the author

David Matsumoto is an internationally acclaimed author and psychologist. He received his BA from the University of Michigan in 1981 with high honors in psychology and Japanese. He subsequently earned his MA (1983) and Ph.D. (1986) in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently Professor of Psychology and Director of the Culture and Emotion Research Laboratory at San Francisco State University, where he has been since 1989. Matsumoto has studied culture, emotion, social interaction, and communication for 25 years. His books include well-known titles, such as Culture and Psychology and The Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology. He is the recipient of many awards and honors in the field of psychology, including being named a G. Stanley Hall lecturer by the American Psychological Association. He is the series editor for Cambridge University Press' Culture and Psychology series. He is also editor for the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Fons J. R. van de Vijver earned his Ph.D. in psychology from Tilburg University in the Netherlands in 1991. He has published more than 300 articles, mainly in the domain of cross-cultural psychology. The most important themes in his work on psychological acculturation and multiculturalism are the domain dependence of acculturation strategies and behaviors, the assessment of acculturation, cultural distance, antecedents and consequences of multiculturalism, and the stability of multiculturalism. He holds a chair in cross-cultural psychology at Tilburg University and is Extraordinary Professor at North-West University, South Africa. Van de Vijver is one of the most frequently cited cross-cultural psychologists in Europe. He is the current Vice Dean for Research and former Vice Dean for Education of his faculty and Vice Director of Babylon, the interdisciplinary research center for studies of multicultural societies at Tilburg University. He was President of Division 2, Assessment and Evaluation, of the International Association of Applied Psychology and is now President-Elect of the European Association of Psychological Assessment.