ABSTRACT
In the 1990s, an increase in the popularity of cross-national comparative research had been evident in the growing number of social science research projects involving the comparison between two or more countries.1 The renewed interest in comparative social science represents more than a cyclical academic trend. It is also a result of “external forces” in the form of rapid increases in the globalization of telecommunications, markets, production, training, as well as research and development.2 The renaissance in comparative social research in the late 1980s followed a period of almost three decades during which social science research had been dominated by methods of statistical and multivariate analysis.3 This domination of computer-based statistical analysis “led to research questions dealing more and more with facts and relationships within the boundaries of one society, one culture, or one social system, with the validity of findings or generalizations from such studies confined to the boundaries of one national state.”4
