Methodological aspects in cross-national research

Abstract

Die Beiträge diese Heftes gehen zumeist auf mehrere Tagungen des Research Committee 33 (Logik und Methodologie) der International Sociological Association zurück. Im Mittelpunkt stehen Fragen der Messung sowie die Vergleichbarkeit, Reliabilität und Validität in der international vergleichenden empirischen Forschung. Die Beiträge sind vier Themengruppen zugeordnet. Im ersten Teil geht es um Design und Implementation kulturvergleichender Studien (Instrumentarium, Question Appraisal System, EU-Projekte, Fragebogenverstehen, Interpretation der Ergebnisse). Der zweite Teil ist verschiedenen Aspekten der "Äquivalenz"-Problematik gewidmet, vor allem in Bezug auf das International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) und den European Social Survey (ESS). Im dritten Teil wird die Harmonisierung soziodemographischer Information in unterschiedlichen Untersuchungen behandelt (amtliche Statistik, ESS, ISSP). Im abschließenden vierten Teil werden sozioökonomische Variablen in international vergleichender Perspektive diskutiert (Einkommen, Bildung, Beruf, Ethnizität, Religion). (ICE)

"Cross-national and cross-cultural survey research has been growing apace for several decades and interest in how best to do them has possibly never been greater. At the International Sociological Association Research Committee 33 (Logic and Methodology) several sessions were dedicated to cross-cultural cross-national survey methodology and the vast majority of the papers in this volume were presented at that conference. Researchers involved in comparative research have always been worried about measurement issues, comparability, reliability and validity of their data. But the design and execution of comparative studies has changed markedly since the early cross-national projects of the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies." (excerpt). Contents: Jürgen H.P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik, Janet A. Harkness: Methodological aspects in cross-national research: foreword (5-10). I. Designing and implementing cross-cultural surveys - Johnny Blair, Linda Piccinino: The development and testing of instruments for cross-cultural and multi-cultural surveys (13-30); Elizabeth Dean Rachel Caspar, Georgina McAvinchey, Leticia Reed, Rosanna Quiroz: Developing a low-cost technique for parallel cross-cultural instrument development: the Question Appraisal System (QAS-04) (31-46); Felizitas Sagebiel: Using a mixed international comparable methodological approach in a European Commission project on gender and engineering (47-64); Timothy P. Johnson, Young Ik Cho, Allyson Holbrook, Diane O'Rourke, Richard Warnecke, Noel Chávez: Cultural variability in the effects of question design features on respondent comprehension (65-78); Kristen Miller, Gordon Willis, Connie Eason, Lisa Moses, Beth Canfield: Interpreting the results of cross-cultural cognitive interviews: a mixed-method approach (79-92). II. Different issues of comparability or "equivalence" - Michael Braun, Janet A. Harkness: Text and context: challenges to comparability in survey questions (95-108); Nina Rother: Measuring attitudes towards immigration across countries with the ESS: potential problems of equivalence (109-126); Vlasta Zucha: The level of equivalence in the ISSP 1999 and its implications on further analysis (127-146). III. Harmonising socio-demographic information in different types of surveys - Thomas Körner, Iris Meyer: Harmonising socio-demographic information in household surveys of official statistics: experiences from the Federal Statistical Office Germany (149-162); Kirstine Kolsrud, Knut Kalgraff Skjak: Harmonising background variables in the European Social Survey (163-182); Evi Scholz: Harmonisation of survey data in the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) (183-200). IV. Socio-economic variables in cross-national perspective - Uwe Warner, Jürgen H.P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik: Measuring income in comparative social survey research (203-222); Jürgen H.P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik, Uwe Warner: How to measure education in cross-national comparison: Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik/Warner-Matrix of Education as a new instrument (223-240); Harry B.G. Ganzeboom: On the cost of being crude: a comparison of detailed and coarse occupational coding in the ISSP 1987 data (241-258); Paul S. Lambert: Ethnicity and the comparative analysis of contemporary survey data (259-278); Christof Wolf: Measuring religious affiliation and religiosity in Europe (279-294).