Tips for successful cross-cultural research
Cross-cultural study design can feel daunting, but need not be.
If you don’t know the culture you’re working in or wanting to study, learn a bit of the language first and identify key questions to ask that will help you navigate the rest.
Identify key persons to work with, keeping in mind not only their openness to you, but their willingness to coordinate and work sensitively with survey respondents and native collaborators down the line.
Invite partnership and collaboration around study design.
A major tenet of ethics is avoiding undue psychological distress, which means you’re careful about the effects of what you ask and how, even if that means you don’t get the data you want. The principle is communication. Be willing to leave some spaces blank, and learn from what they tell you. You may need to adapt accordingly, and throw some questions out. Be flexible.
What you’re looking for is frequency of the response, and then why.
When you’re ready to publish/disseminate, keep in mind you may need to go back to the drawing board to reevaluate key assumptions. Let the data talk to you.
Keep in mind you may need to publish your methodology, a sample survey "schedule" or known limits to the study. This helps other researchers to understand where the gaps may be, and decision makers to mitigate the risks and opportunities your findings suggest.
For more practical tips, get in touch.