2 - Methods

Summary

In this chapter we present the psychological methods used in this study. The situation is rather complex, because we basically used the same set of tasks in different locations, but some changes were introduced during the course of the program, and some additional tasks were used on some occasions. What we will do here is present this basic set, commenting on the variations in time and place, and leave additional methods to be presented in the relevant chapters.

But first a few comments on our conception of methodology in cross-cultural psychology (for more details, see Berry et al., 2002; Mishra & Dasen, 2007; Segall et al., 1999). Wassmann and Dasen (1994a) defined their basic three-step research strategy on the occasion of a collaborative study in Papua New Guinea: first get a thorough knowledge of the culture through ethnography (both by reading whatever documents are available and by one's own field-work), and then start asking informants; not just one or a few key informants, but people from different segments of the population. Indeed, in our research in Papua New Guinea, we found that even knowledge about the number system (Wassmann & Dasen, 1994b), supposedly shared by everyone, was in fact unevenly distributed in the group. Old men used a different and more complex body count system than young men, women claimed not to know it at all and children learned only the base ten Western system in school.