Abstract
Methodology in cross-cultural research: Current perspectives. The goal of the development of a specific methodology to carry out transcultural studies is to answer a set of problems that the researcher must face when trying to compare cultural groups. The process of operationalizing the construct culture into its indicators must be done in the following three stages (van de Vijver y Leung, 1997b): the first one concerns the selection of the context variables that allow us to interpret, in a proper way, cultural differences; the second one is concerned with the design of the study that will be used to measure the context variables and, finally, the third stage concerns the statistical strategy that will be required to evaluate to what extent context variables explain transcultural differences. In this sense, transcultural research faces up to the control of a set of biases that, even though common to all resear ches, have specific characteristics in this context. The goal of the present work is to show the main sources of bias that transcultural research faces, referring basically to the materials and the procedure used to collect the data as well as to the different styles of answering which subjects show in different cultures. In the same way, we will tackle the main sampling strategies and statistical analyses that are used in transcultural research, taking as a reference a proposal to classify transcultural studies depending on dimensions that determine the formulation of hypothesis and the method used in the study.
