Response Style and Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Rating Scales Among East Asian and North American Students

Abstract

This report examines cross-cultural differences in response style regarding the use of rating scales Subjects were high school students 944 from Sendai (Japan), 1,357 from Taipei (Taiwan), 687 from Edmonton and Calgary (Canada), and 2,174 from the Minneapolis metropolitan area and Fairfax County, Virginia Responses to fifty-seven 7-point Likert-type scales were analyzed The Japanese and Chinese students were more likely than the two North American groups to use the midpoint on the scales, the U S subjects were more likely than the other three groups to use the extreme values Within each cultural group, endorsement of individualism was positively related to the use of extreme values and negatively related to the use of the midpoint These small, albeit statistically significant, differences in response styles generally did not alter cross-cultural comparisons of item means

Relations among parental acceptance and control and children’s social adjustment in Chinese American and European American families.

“…Because the Chinese response style tends to be more moderate, rather than at the extremes of a scale (Chen, Lee, & Stevenson, 1995), it may be that CA parents actually do exert more control over their children. According to Ho (1996), the guiding principle of filial piety "justifies absolute parental authority over children" (p. 156).…”

Cultural and leadership predictors of corporate social responsibility values of top management: a GLOBE study of 15 countries

“…The possibility of cultural differences in response styles to Likert scales presents a potential artifactual phenomenon that could affect our findings. For example, respondents from more collectivist cultures may be less likely than those from individualistic cultures to use the extreme points in a scale (Chen et al, 1995). Thus standardization of survey item scores by country, prior to forming scale scores (e.g., a scale score for visionary leadership for a given firm in a given country), provides a means of controlling for such rating processes.…”

Psychological Universals: What Are They and How Can We Know?

“…There are many methodological challenges to comparing cultures, and cross-cultural comparisons of mean responses to subjective Likert scales is a method that is especially prone to methodological artifacts. Without proper experimental controls, such comparisons suffer from moderacy response biases (e.g., Chen, Lee, & Stevenson, 1995), acquiescent response styles (e.g., Choi & Choi, 2002), deprivation effects (Peng et al, 1997), and reference-group effects (Heine, Lehman, Peng, & Greenholtz, 2002). Because of these shortcomings that are inherent in cultural comparisons of Likert scale measures, which are used in so many applications of the cross-cultural survey, this method for exploring universals has rarely been used to its full potential.…”