Culture and Response Behavior: An Overview of Cultural Mechanisms Explaining Survey Error

Abstract

Awareness that culture may influence survey response behavior has a long history. Early recognition that social surveys may be influenced by cultural processes dates back to the late 1940s when cross-national survey research studies were first fielded. During the ensuing decades, the rapid growth and development of social survey methodologies, coupled with an increasingly globalized world, and expanding opportunities for cross-national and multi-ethnic investigations, created awareness of the importance of understanding differences between communities and societies and how these differences can influence data collection and survey errors. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of three of the more well-known frameworks for conceptualizing cultural values and orientations (i.e., Hofstede’s cultural orientations; Inglehart’s national values, and Schwartz’s universal values), and then present the available evidence that links these various cultural processes with the total survey error framework through selected survey response and nonresponse behaviors.