How Comparative Is Comparative Research
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3756944 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Roger Jowell (Social & Community Planning Research, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1998 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 168-177 |
| Publication date | 1998-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Behavioral Scientist (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-7642 • E-ISSN: 1552-3381 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0002764298042002004 |
| OpenAlex | W1993569003 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 79 |
| References cited | 8 |
Social scientists tend to accept lower standards of rigor in cross-national surveys than in national surveys, leading to heroic conclusions about differences between nations on the basis of obviously faulty data. Arising perhaps from a commendable wish to respect different cultural norms, even some of the most conscientious cross-national studies make the mistake of permitting considerable variations by country in the type and quality of the methods they deploy. Meanwhile, analysts of cross-national data frequently abandon offering explanations and interpretations in favor of league tables of distributions showing merely "gee whiz" national differences. This article acknowledges the formidable obstacles in the way of achieving rigor in large-scale comparative studies and offers 10 possible rules to mitigate the difficulties. It suggests that bigger is usually worse and recommends routine cross-national collaboration in analysis and interpretation-not just in design, development, and execution-among scholars in each of the nations under the microscope
Classical economics · Comparative research · Economics · Epistemology · Geography · Interpretation (philosophy) · League · League table · Mistake · Political science · Public relations · Quality (philosophy) · Scale (ratio) · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Law · Qualitative Comparative Analysis Research
Developing quality standards for cross-national survey research
Enter Culture, Exit Arts?
Public Attitudes towards Family Policies in Europe
Political Trust and Support for the Welfare State
Production Regimes and Work Orientations
Theory and Method in the Comparative Study of Values
Labor and Love
Questionnaire Design and Translation for Refugee Populations
Gender-Role Egalitarianism--Is the Trend Reversal Real
Measuring Populism across Nations
Definitional Indifferences and Formal/Functional Equivalences
Inter-firm relational adaptation
Measuring Happiness and Life Satisfaction amongst Swedish Citizens
The Association of Organizational Justice with Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment among Nigerian Correctional Staff
Using the Job Demands-Resources Model to Examine Possible Correlates of Fear of Being Victimized at Work Among Chinese Prison Officers
Exploring the Effects of Multiple Dimensions of Organizational Justice on Correctional Staff Job Stress
Exploring the Relationship of Organizational Justice with Chinese Prison Staff Life Satisfaction
The antecedents of job involvement
Testing the job demands-resources model for Indian correctional staff job satisfaction
Everyone Has to Find Themselves in the Story”
Gender, Culture and Non-Financial Employment Commitment in Great Britain and Sweden
Class and Conformism
European statistics on cultural participation and their international comparability
International Networks and Arts Policy Research1
Participation Studies and Cross-National Comparison
Cross-country comparisons of cultural statistics
The dog that didn't bark
Not for the fainthearted”
Looking across
In Sizing Civil Society, Wording and Format Matter
Designing Response Categories of Agreement Scales for Cross‐national Surveys in East Asia
Challenges to Comparative Research in a Globalizing Media Landscape
Migration of the Ukrainian Population
The Class Structure of Capitalist Societies
Employment and the Family
The European Social Survey and European research policy
Why some mothers overestimate birth size and length of pregnancy in rural Nepal
A Preliminary Study of Gender Differences in Death Penalty Views of College Students From Bangladesh, China, Nigeria, and the United States
Identity Horizons Among Finnish Postsecondary Students
Formal and Informal Crime Control Views in Nigeria and the United States
Formal and Informal Crime Control Views in Bangladesh and the United States
Improving Knowledge Production in Comparative Survey Research
Social attitudes towards welfare policies in Russia and other European countries
Truth Be in the Field
Harmonization of Cross-National Survey Projects on Political Behavior
The underlying Public Attitude Toward Government Responsibility to Intervene in Socioeconomics, 30 Years of Evidence from the ISSP
Mapping social capital across Europe
Defining English Medium Instruction
Predictors of Social and Defensive Coping to Address Workplace Stressors
Catholicism, Job Security Regulations and Female Employment
Using cultural and structural indicators to explain measurement noninvariance in gender role attitudes with multilevel structural equation modeling
Formal and informal control views in China, Japan, and the U.S
Correlates of informal social control in Guangzhou, China neighborhoods
Death penalty views in China, Japan and the U.S
Organizational Commitment and Conflicting Values
Effects of workplace variables on the organizational commitment of Nigerian correctional staff
Methodological Issues in Cross-Border Analyses of European Small-Area Data
The Globalization of Public Opinion Research
Domain spillover and job stress
The link between burnout and life satisfaction of prison officers in Nigeria
The connection of police strategies for coping with workplace problems to stress in two countries
The new gender essentialism - domestic and family 'choices' and their relation to attitudes1
The Survey Method
Improving the evidence base for international comparative research
Comparability and Equivalence in Social Research
Survey Data Quality in Analyzing Harmonized Indicators of Protest Behavior
Learning about Democracy at Work
Class and Family
Les générations entretiennent-elles un rapport différent au travail
Methodological Issues in National-Comparative Research on Cultural Tastes
Some issues in cross-national comparative research methods
In Search of a Comparable Measure of Generalized Individual Religiosity in the World Values Survey
Gender, Traumatic Events, and Mental Health Disorders in a Rural Asian Setting
Parents, Television, and Children's Emotional Expressions
Work Orientations in Scandinavia
Measurement Equivalence in Cross-National Research
Consumer Confidence In Ghana And Its Implications For Survey-Based Economic Indicators In Africa
Problems of Measurement of the Relationship Between Civil Society and Democracy When Using Survey Data
Happiness is not Enough
| Unique citing works | 79 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,82 |
| Citation span | 1998 - 2025 (28) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 78 |