ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by presenting monocultural studies, which aim to describe particular cultural communities, countries, or cultural areas and analyze the interrelations of culture and the psychological functioning of people. Multicultural comparative studies analyze two or more cultural communities or countries with regard to the sociocultural attributes of these communities and their relations to the psychological makeup of their members. Such studies in anthropology and cultural psychology are based on the comparative case-based method. The chapter addresses the use of comparative approach by anthropologists and cultural and cross cultural psychologists. It discusses the utilization of a comparative design with cases and with variables. The chapter analyzes two forms of comparative designs: comparative case-based and comparative variable-based studies. It also addresses the issue of the levels of analysis: ecological versus individual, and the danger of various fallacies: ecological fallacy and fallacy of composition.
