Assessing analytical robustness in cross-cultural comparisons

Response styles can distort survey findings. Culture-specific response styles (CSRS) are particularly problematic for researchers using multicultural samples because the resulting data contamination can lead to inaccurate conclusions about the research question under study. This article critically reviews past recommendations to correct for cultural biases in responses, and proposes a framework that enables the researcher to assess the robustness of empirical findings from CSRS. This approach also avoids the disadvantages of ignoring the problem and interpreting spurious results or choosing one single correction technique that potentially introduces new kinds of data contamination.