Etic Plus Emic Versus Pseudoetic

Abstract

A basic assumption of cross-cultural psychology, that instruments made in one culture and applied to another culture would not be as useful as instruments made in each of the cultures in which they are to be used, was tested with samples of "Mainstream" and Hispanic naval recruits. Some subjects (62 Mainstream and 60 Hispanic recruits) responded to a role differential that consisted of 30 roles judged on 20 behavior scales taken from a previous study of American and Greek role perceptions; 54 Mainstream and 51 Hispanic recruits responded to a role differential specially constructed after interviews with Hispanics and Mainstream individuals. As expected, the second role differential identified more cultural differences than the first. However, the first was not entirely useless. It did identify more cultural differences than could be expected by chance. The results are discussed in terms of the relative advantage of developing instruments after pretests in the relevant cultures and the increased time and effort to develop such instruments relative to the advantages of the shortcut of simply using available instruments.

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