The Reliability and Validity of a Measurement Instrument of Culture Defined As Symbol Exchange

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The Reliability and Validity of a Measurement
Instrument of Culture Defined As Symbol Exchange

• Hroar Klempe Torbjørn Rundmo,
• Dept. of Psychology, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway
• Workshop on Humiliation and Violent Conflict,
• December, 13-14 2007, Columbia University, NY

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Four perspectives on culture

• Culture as elite canon/artefacts
• Cultural psychology (Cole, M. (1998) Cultural
  Psychology, The Belknap Press of Harvard
  University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts)
• Culture as reflection of socio-economic relations
  
• Risk psychology (Douglas, M. Wildavsky, A.
  (1983) Risk and Culture, University of
  California Press, Berkeley)
• Culture as sets of values, beliefs and behaviours
  
• Cross-cultural psychology (Hofstede, G. (1980)
  Cultures consequencees International
  differences in work-related values, CA Sage,
  Newberry Park )
• Culture as communication/exchange of symbols
• Discursive psychology (Geertz, Clifford
  (1973/2000) The Interpretation of Cultures.
  Selected Essays. Basic Books, New York)

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Table 1 Dimensionalities of general culture
defined as symbol exchange
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Table 2. Discriminant validity of the measurement
instruments of culture as symbols
Wilks l 0.524, p lt .001, ETA2 0.48 , p lt
.01, p lt.001
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Preliminary conclusions

• The project is based upon the idea that culture
  could be measured empirically
• The reliability of the indices were found to be
  satisfactory
• The items behaved as expected and the
  dimensional structure was conceptually meaningful
• In addition to general culturetraffic safety
  culture was also part of the same instrument
• As expected, the exploratory factor analysis
  differentiated between general and traffic safety
  culture, however the same dimensional structure
  could applied for both types of culture
• The items fell into five identical indices (shown
  in table 2)
• The discriminant valifity of the measurement
  instrument was judged to be satisfactory
• The instrument showed that there were cultural
  differences in a Ghanaian and Norwegian public
• The results may indicate that culture as symbol
  exchange may be a fruitful approach for studying
  culture and cultural differences
• The project is in a start up phase and data are
  collected in several other countries. Additional
  and m,ore advanced analysis would be carried out
  during next year.