Is this study culturally correct?

There are many problems associated with designing research studies and one of them is the manner in which cultures are appropriately represented and if there is fair and equal representation of various cultural groups that will not result in a misinterpretation in the data collection process. It is important, when designing a study, to first understand exactly how cultures could be misrepresented or underrepresented and to understand exactly what traits define a culture so that there is not a mixing of mega-units of cultures or clustering of cultures that may be alike and therefore an underrepresentation of various minority subcultures (Munck & Korotayev, 2000).

An example of this could be a comparative study about the health of American Muslim’s versus American Jewish cultures. Currently, African-Americans make up a substantial part of Muslim Americans and the do not make up a large portion of Jewish-Americans, and African-American Muslims have the same negative health statistics as non-Muslim African-Americans such as a 30% increase in likelihood to die of cancer, 40% increase in likelihood of stroke, 50% increase in likelihood of diabetes than non-African Americans (Sahkoor-Abdullah, 2003). By clustering the diverse Muslim culture together the researcher may draw a false conclusion by having underrepresented groups such as the sub-culture of African-American Muslims and any correlation between Muslims and long-term health comparing with Jews and long-term health could result poor data and minimal value to the study (Brannon & Feist, 2004).

Efforts can be made to include all groups as research subjects by educating researchers prior to the initialization of the study in the concept of Galton’s Problem which is the understanding that researchers should avoid the error of making inferences from cross-cultural data without thoroughly understanding exactly what defines the cultures they are incorporating into the study (Eff, E. A, 2001). By doing this and familiarizing themselves with the Societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, which is a database designed with 186 preindustrialized societies and over 200 associated variables, researchers can further narrow down their definition of a culture and make sure they are not underrepresenting any subcultures with in their study groups (Skidmore, 2000).

I want to read more:

Brannon, L. & Feist, J. (2004). Health psychology: An introduction to behavior and health (5th Ed.). CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

De Munck, V., & Korotayev, A. (2000). Cultural units in cross-cultural research. Ethnology, 39(4), 335. Retrieved March 17, 2007, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5001198687

Eff, E. A. (2001). Does Mr. Galton Still Have a Problem?: Autocorrelation in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN. Presented at the Southern Anthropological Association Annual meeting, Nashville Tennessee, April 5-8, 2001.

Sahkoor-Abdullah, B. (2003). Closing the health gap for african americans. Perspective, Muslim American Society. Retrieved March 16, 2007 from the Park Ridge Center for Health, Faith, and Ethics’ Databases.

Skidmore College. (2000). Cross-cultural data files: Standard cross-cultural sample. Microcase Data Files: Data For Course Research Projects.

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