Does an Acquiescent Response Style Explain Why Koreans are Less Consistent than Americans?

Abstract

Cultural differences in consistency of responding to questions could be artifacts of cultural differences in acquiescence (an agreeing response style). To highlight this issue, the authors attempt to replicate previous research showing that Koreans are less consistent than Americans are when responding to questions about values. In accord with prior research, the authors find that Koreans are both more acquiescent and less consistent than Americans are. However, the differences between countries in acquiescence partially mediate the differences between countries in consistency. In sum, when using mathematical measures of consistency, researchers must take into account the influence of response styles, and the authors demonstrate two methods for accomplishing that.

Cultural Differences in Expectations of Change and Tolerance for Contradiction: A Decade of Empirical Research

“…Participants in East Asian countries (Japan, China, Thailand, Singapore, and Korea) provide less internally consistent answers to positively keyed and negatively keyed questionnaire items than do North Americans, resulting in lower scale reliabilities. This phenomenon, however, does not appear to be simply due to response biases, such as acquiescence (Schimmack, 2009;Wong et al, 2003; although see Locke & Baik, 2009), but rather reflects substantive cultural variation in lay belief systems. Naïve dialecticism, as assessed by the Dialectical Self Scale (DSS; Spencer-Rodgers, Srivastava, et al, 2010), is correlated with more ambivalent responding on Likert-type measures of self-esteem and personality traits (Hamamura et al, 2008).…”

Perceptions of quality and approaches to studying in higher education: a comparative study of Chinese and British postgraduate students at six British business schools

“…One such bias is an acquiescent response style: the tendency systematically to agree with questionnaire items rather than disagree with them. This varies across cultures (van Herk et al 2004) and is stronger in participants from east and south-east Asia than in Western participants (Johnson et al 2005;Locke and Baik 2009;P. B. Smith 2004).…”

The role of response biases in the relationship between students’ perceptions of their courses and their approaches to studying in higher education

“…The level of acquiescence varies across different cultures (van Herk et al , 2004; Fischer et al , 2009; Van Dijk et al , 2009). In particular, it is higher among respondents from east and southeast Asia than among western respondents (Smith, 2004; Johnson et al , 2005; Locke & Baik, 2009). It also varies across ethnic groups within the same culture (Javeline, 1999).…”

“…If a questionnaire consists of equal numbers of positively and negatively coded items, then the level of acquiescence can be measured as the difference between the sum (or the mean) of the positively coded items and the sum (or the mean) of the negatively coded items (Martin, 1964; Johanson & Osborn, 2004). Equivalently, it can be measured as the sum (or the mean) of the responses to all of the items before the negatively coded items are scored in reverse (Couch & Keniston, 1960; Ray, 1979, 1983; Davison & Srichantra, 1988; Locke & Baik, 2009). Van Dijk et al (2009) applied the measure put forward by van Herk et al (2004) separately to the positively coded items and to the negatively coded items before they were scored in reverse; they then averaged the two results to obtain an index of acquiescence between +1 and −1 for any number of positively coded and negatively coded items.…”