The Mismeasure of Culture Self-Report Questionnaires and Positivist Analysis in Intercultural Communication Research
Abstract
The use of self-report questionnaires has been one of the most prevalent methods of data collection in Intercultural Communication research since as early as the 1950s. Yet, the method has received widespread criticism from a range of academic disciplines. For the field of Intercultural Communication, there is the added concern that self-report data and its epistemological companion, quantitative analysis, succeed only in reducing complex intercultural issues to an overly-simplistic numerical summary. Despite these criticisms, the number and influence of self-report questionnaires in Intercultural Communication research continues to grow. Therefore, this paper seeks to remind researchers of the many problems existing when asking respondents to self-report on complex intercultural issues. By way of an example, Ang et al’s (2007) Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS) will be analysed through a critically interpretive approach.
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