ABSTRACT
Many of the challenges facing monocultural psychological research are intensified when comparing psychological functioning across cultures. Valid use of the same measurement instrument across cultural groups is problematic. Moreover, psychological constructs may be tied to a specific cultural context, which precludes generalizability of theories (usually developed and operationalized in Western settings) from one cultural group to another. Even if psychological constructs correspond across cultural groups and even if the position of individuals within cultures on a construct can be identified validly by means of the same indicators, there is still a host of method artifacts that can distort the meaning of quantitative differences in scores on measures across these groups. Examples include differences in social desirability and acquiescence tendency between cultural groups that affect score levels in a host of self-report instruments, but are rarely made explicit (see Smith & Fischer, this volume).
