Cross-Cultural Contributions to Attitude Research

The Development and Current State of Youth Research in Turkey

“…Within the category of research on social change, researchers were also interested in value transformations among young people. Broader research on youth values during those years predominantly addressed constructs such as authoritarianism, nationalism, liberalism-conservatism and prejudice within and across nations (see Jacobson, Kumata andGullahorn, 1960 andSmith, 2006 for a review). In line with these studies, adopting a comparative approach and using surveys and scales, Turkish scholars studied changing values among young people, the relative significance of modern versus traditional values for young people and the role of education and urbanization on value transformations.…”

Lost in Translation? Item Validity in Bilingual Political Surveys

“…Yet meeting this objective in a bilingual context introduces additional burdens to researchers. These burdens can be traced to one source: the need to achieve functional equivalence-that is, the same meaning-across two or more linguistic versions of survey items (Jacobson, Kumata, and Gullahorn 1960).…”

“…Several issues typically arise in this method, however, thereby introducing some slippage between the different language versions of an instrument. One such challenge is the difficulty in ensuring that a translated item captures its intended meaning, or as Jacobson, Kumata, and Gullahorn (1960) note, that a balance between literal and functional equivalence is achieved. Although it is straightforward enough to directly translate words from one language into another, the tougher challenge resides in making sure that a translated item communicates its point clearly and precisely.…”

“…4, October 2009, Pp. 1530-1548doi:10.1017 The quote is taken from Jacobson, Kumata, and Gullahorn (1960).…”

“…days of survey research, however, analysts have identified several pitfalls in this back translation method. One fundamental challenge is that by definition, language differences violate a strict sense of comparability across items because different words from different languages produce varying stimuli to survey respondents (Jacobson, Kumata, and Gullahorn 1960). This challenge is compounded by the availability of wide-ranging referents for the same concept in two or more languages, such that a direct translation of questions may fail to convey the intended meaning of the original items (Ervin and Bower 1952-53).…”