Discuss the problems Tayeb identified with confronting researchers studying culture.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Ans: One issue concerns an agreement among researchers about the term culture; what does it mean and how is it defined? (Tayeb, 2001). Does the term culture refer to a national view? Is culture based on societal relationship, for example, individualistic versus collectivist? A second issue according to Tayeb is that researchers tend to restrict the research to a few dimensions, which may impact a full understanding of the impact of culture (Tayeb). Another problem identified with cultural research is lack of information about the population used in a study; for example, simply stating Asian does not give enough information about the population. There is considerable variability in various regions, for example, Asians. Another issue for cultural researchers is the consideration and reporting of noncultural factors that potentially impact cultural research (Tayeb, 2001). An issue for researchers is the translation of scales (measurements for the dependent variable(s)) (Cha, Kim, & Erlen, 2007). Cha et al. noted that completing a translation from one language to another does not guarantee an accurate representation of the material.