Cross culture

THE RELATION BETWEEN CULTURE AND RESPONSE STYLES Evidence From 19 Countries

Yanan Wang Ph.D. Candidate of Social Psychology  Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences  Zhejiang University

2010.9.26

Topic

What are the associations between

country-level cultural orientations and person-level response styles?

Keywords

(I) Country-level cultural orientations Hofstede-Four cultural orientations: Power distance Uncertainty avoidance Individualism-Collectivism Masculinity-Femininity

Keywords

(II) Response biases

Response set

Response style Extremeness response Style Acquiescence response style

Hypotheses

• Persons in societies that are high in power distance way be more likely to

exhibit acquiescent response behavior.

• Extreme responding may be more common in cultures that emphasize uncertainty avoidance.

• Persons within individualistic cultures may be more likely to demonstrate extreme response behavior.

• Extreme response styles may be more common among persons in masculine cultures.

Method

(I) Data source:• The data to be analyzed were originally collected as

part of employee surveys (Employee satisfaction and Work environment)conducted by ISR LLC, between 1992 and 2002. A total of 20,270 surveys was available for analysis. A total of 19 countries on five continents is represented in these data.

• 120 items. Most items were closed-ended and employed 5-point Likert-type response formats. Only items using the disagree-to-agree format were included in these analyses.

• Additional information was available with regard to several person-level characteristics, including age, gender, and length of employment.

Method

(II) Measures:(i) Measures of cultural orientations: Hofstede’s (2001)(ii) Measures of extreme response style and acquiescence

were constructed from the questions available in the core survey instrument.

• 1.Measures of extreme response style• 2. Measures of acquiescent response style(iii) Gender, age, and length of employment

(III) Analyses: Hierarchical linear modeling

Results

Discussion• A attempt to link national dimensions of culture

with the response styles examined in this study. This research consequently makes an important contribution to expanding body of research concerned with investigating and understanding the mechanisms by which culture influences the collection of questionnaire data.

• The national-level measures of Hofstede’s (2001) four important cultural dimensions may be questioned, as they were initially developed on the basis of survey data colected more than 30 years ago.

• The measures of acquiescent and extreme response behaviors were developed post hoc from survey questions originally collected for other purposes surveys (Employee satisfaction and Work environment).

THANKS VERY MUCH!