Quality in Qualitative Research Across Cultural Communities

Qualitative research across cultural communities aims at studying meaning and experience of individuals in different socio-cultural contexts. With the increasing establishment of qualitative research in the social sciences over the past decades, the question of how to evaluate qualitative research, the plans, the methods and the results obtained with them also has become a topic of major relevance for the further development of qualitative research as a whole. This chapter aims at discussing how general aspects of good quality in qualitative research apply to comparative studies across cultural communities and what aspects are particularly relevant to facilitate good quality in such studies.
Qualitative research across cultural communities can be found in various disciplines across the social sciences. While the fields of ethnography and cultural anthropology do not necessarily aim at comparison, and some scholars are even quite critical towards attempts to compare ‘cultures’, there exist important comparative studies – for example, in cultural and linguistic anthropology. It is also prominent in disciplines such as sociology, education, comparative sociolinguistics and cultural psychology. Research in the field of intercultural or cross-cultural psychology, on the other hand, often follows a quantitative design, treating ‘culture’ as an independent variable. What might be problematic here is that ethnicity or nationality are often unquestioningly used as the dominant categories relevant for research organization. Those conceptualizations of culture in terms of nationality or ethnic belonging (e.g., ‘the Camaroonians’ or ‘the Kurds’) assume homogeneity in the group under study and do not do justice to the complexity of the relations, conditions, processes etc. that may account for a specific phenomenon under study.
The way quality is addressed in qualitative research across cultural communities varies depending on the research tradition the project is based in, as well as on the specific communities involved. The present chapter draws mainly on examples from cultural and linguistic anthropology and cultural developmental psychology and studies conducted in different Western middle-class communities. Aspects relevant in research with non-Western communities, particularly minorities, will, however, also be addressed. In the following, I will first provide an overview of the history of qualitative research across cultural communities and how these studies addressed aspects of good quality. I will then present aspects that need to be considered to facilitate good quality in comparative qualitative research across cultural communities and conclude with a general outlook and critical reflections.