Comparative qualitative research in Cultural Psychology: Challenges und Potentials

The present paper aims to provide an approach that allows to study the interplay of culture and psychological human functioning in comparative study designs. Starting out with a brief overview of how qualitative, cultural, and comparative research is addressed in the field of psychology we will take a Cultural Psychology approach to suggest that the unit of analysis for comparative research needs to be situated social interaction. We will then suggest an integrative approach that allows us to study social interaction both on a micro- and on a macro-level by combining discourse analysis of situated social interaction with ethnographic procedures that address the sociocultural embeddedness of these interactional practices. We illustrate this approach by examining analyses drawn on a comparative study program conducted on middle class families in Los Angeles and Rome. Finally, we will discuss some criteria of validity that particularly apply to the field of comparative research in Cultural Psychology.