Methodological challenges in using cross-cultural databases for quantitative research
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | The use of cross-cultural databases as a source of information for quantitative research by academics is increasing. A good example are the Human Relations Area Files that are available online (eHRAF) and have a long legacy. Regardless of how useful it may be to have sources containing large amounts of narrative data that are organized, searchable, and still expanding, these sources may contain many issues that researchers have yet to resolve and may divert them from producing reliable results. Some issues stem from the format and age of data. Narrative data collected in the 18th and mostly 19th centuries may misrepresent reality due to a number of collector biases that researchers are aware of and try to avoid today. Researchers, particularly those who code the information from the material, may also misinterpret them. Some issues may also be caused by the way databases are built. Some critical information is missing, which would allow proper evaluation of data quality or usability for answering specific questions. And even the design of a search device can have an impact on research results. Many of the problems mentioned above make attempting to evaluate the quality of data to be used in hypothesis testing complicated, and some important questions currently go unanswered. I will demonstrate this using data I have collected and coded from eHRAF in order to study ritual dance and attempt to draw some conclusions about the data's reliability as well as discuss the difficulties that may go unnoticed by current research. |
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