A roadmap to doing culturally grounded developmental science

Abstract

This paper provides a roadmap for engaging in cross-cultural, developmental research in practical, ethical, and community-engaged ways. To cultivate the flexibility necessary for conducting cross-cultural research, we structure our roadmap as a series of questions that each research program might consider prior to embarking on cross-cultural examinations in developmental science. Within each topic, we focus on the challenges and opportunities inherent to different types of study designs, fieldwork, and collaborations because our collective experience in conducting research in multiple cultural contexts has taught us that there can be no single "best practice". Here we identify the challenges that are unique to cross-cultural research as well as present a series of recommendations and guidelines. We also bring to the forefront ethical considerations which are rarely encountered in the laboratory context, but which researchers face daily while conducting research in a cultural context which one is not a member. As each research context requires unique solutions to these recurring challenges, we urge researchers to use this set of questions as a starting point, and to expand and tailor the questions and potential solutions with community members to support their own research design or cultural context. This will allow us to move the field towards more inclusive and ethical research practices.

Mealtime conversations between parents and their 2-year-old children in five cultural contexts.

“…Mothers seemed to be the driving force behind this child-centered communicative pattern: they spoke the most, initiated most themes, and most of the themes they were involved in also included the child. This aligns with the former analyses of these videos showing that mothers teach more compared to fathers (Köster et al, 2022) and a recent study by Broesch et al (2021) who described mothers as the primary interaction partners for young children across five cultural settings. Fathers spoke less and were less likely to be involved in a conversation with the child.…”

“…However, to our knowledge, there are very few quantitative comparisons. While ethnographic descriptions offer important and rich insights into individual cultural settings (see e.g., De León, 2011;Gaskins, 2006), quantitative comparisons are essential for understanding gradual cultural differences (Broesch et al, 2021;Hewlett et al, 1998;Köster et al, 2022) and offer core input for theory building.…”

Long-form recordings in low- and middle-income countries: recommendations to achieve respectful research

“…As a result, they might, consciously or unconsciously, take these behaviours and experiences as the norm and interpret infants from other communities' linguistic development, and their caregivers' role in that process, as being inferior to that norm. This could lead to the stigmatisation of communities, deter them from participating in other research projects, and impair researchers' collaborations with these communities (Broesch et al, 2023). We cannot expand this due to space constraints but invite interested readers to look at the ongoing debate regarding the '30 million word gap' for an example that touches on this issue and builds on research using LENA (e.g.…”

“…Proposed solutions. Researchers should keep in mind that socio-cultural factors influence developmental processes and assume that supposed 'universal' phenomena often differ between communities (Broesch et al, 2023;Singh et al, 2023). In addition to engaging in practices whereby they can acknowledge their own potential biases (e.g.…”

Measuring variation in gaze following across communities, ages, and individuals — a showcase of the TANGO–CC

“…While this sampling bias is often discussed within adult psychology, it is equally relevant to developmental psychology (Nielsen et al, 2017). Early experiences shape the way children think about and interact with the world and an ontogenetic perspective is needed to explore the foundational aspects of human behavioral diversity (Amir & McAuliffe, 2020;Broesch et al, 2023;Liebal & Haun, 2018;Torréns et al, 2023).…”