Reading focus
Syllabus: How Can We Compare Psychological Processes Across Cultures?
Follow how qualitative descriptions and existing measurement frameworks enter the Chinese and South African projects.
Why you’re reading it. Turn the opening critique into a constructive approach to developing concepts across settings.
A question to consider. Design the first stage of a comparison of responsibility: who would help define it, what descriptions would you gather, and how would you decide which concepts to compare?
Why this reading
Cheung and colleagues show how locally generated concepts can alter a comparative measurement framework. Chinese and South African personality projects make the combination of local inquiry and cross-cultural comparison concrete.
Before you read
Emic inquiry develops understanding within a cultural setting; etic inquiry seeks concepts usable across settings. An imported instrument can impose its original categories before researchers have investigated what matters locally.
Read for
- Trace how descriptions become constructs, items and proposed dimensions in the two projects.
- Distinguish a locally salient concept from evidence that it is either unique to that setting or widely shared.
Consider afterwards
- A local interview identifies a relationship pattern missing from an imported scale. How could you investigate its relevance in both settings?
- Who should participate in deciding which descriptions belong together?
Editorial context
The authors advocate an integrated approach and discuss projects at different stages of development. In 2011 the South African inventory was still developing; the review does not establish a final universal personality structure. Cultural salience, factor replication and comparable average scores require different evidence.