Michael Sylvester wrote:
> -Go ahead and try to randomly select subjects in Tibet for
> Experimental and Control groups.
>
> -Informed consent,huh. They may think that you are working
> for the Chilean secret police or the CIA.
>
> - And how about the problem of translation- which may not
> carry the
> same semantic import.
> -Paper- pencil responses may not be appropriate.
> Forget about debriefing.
> - Questionnable transfer of Eurocentric construct validity to
> different samples of populations.
>
> Stay tuned.
(I respond with moderate sarcasm, but trying to remain open to the
possibility that I've simply read too much into your original claims:)
Short reaction: that's three irrelevant examples, two unsupported
assertions, and one piece of concept-bombing.
Longer response:
Something about the form of your response (Michael) suggests that
you thought that you were providing counterexamples to what I'd written. But
of course what you wrote is not relevant at all to what I wrote. So what's
going on? One possibility is that you DIDN'T mean to disagree with me, and
thought that you were writing about some different topic altogether. I find
that far-fetched.
Assuming that you did mean this to be a response, perhaps I need to
state my point in different words. You at least seem to believe that
scientific methodologies don't transfer to other cultures. I assumed that
you meant that while in our culture methodological statements like these are
true...
- One needs a representative sample if one expects to generalize one's
results from sample to population.
- A true experiment effectively eliminates many alternative explanations for
apparent causal relationships.
...in other cultures these statements about methodologies are NOT
true (for example, that when one's population of interest is, say, Chilean,
that one can effectively generalize from non-representative populations, or
that when one's subjects are Hindu, true experiments do not help eliminate
alternative explanations for apparent causal relationships).
I hold that these statements are true whether one's subjects are of
European descent, African, Asian, non-human animals, plants, inanimate
matter, abstract concepts and symbols, whatever. Some other methodology
statements (e.g., about the need for "blind" participants and raters) only
hold for human subjects, but not for those in some cultures and not those in
other cultures.
Assuming again that you DID mean this to be a response, a generous
reading would look like this:
======================
Apparently I misread your claim, and you merely mean to say that it is
difficult to do scientific research in other cultures. You still believe (as
I do) that the methodologies transfer - their importance to research with
western participants carries over to research with non-western participants.
If that were what you meant, I doubt that many of us would disagree with
you.
======================
That reading would explain why you responded with an argument that it is
difficult to do research in other countries rather than an argument that the
methodologies somehow become irrelevant or unnecessary or worse when used
with participants in other cultures (as I expect the sources Jim Clark might
provide, or at least attempt).
However, I think that's an overly generous reading. I suspect
instead that you believe that your responses _were_ arguments that
methodologies become irrelevant, unnecessary, or worse when used with
participants in other cultures. What makes me suspect that is the consistent
confusions you show when you talk about research (for example, in your
response above, failing to distinguish between selection of subjects and
assignment to groups), your "concept-bombing" (using terms like "validity"
without apparently understanding what they mean), and the use of repeated
assertions without any support (e.g., "-Paper- pencil responses may not be
appropriate...Forget about debriefing"). In addition, my post was in
response to your criticism of researchers who "think that they can go to
other countries and just transfer their tools and come to valid
conclusions". I took it, then, that you believe that there is some reason
that they cannot do so. Do you have any support for that belief?
I ask that more-or-less rhetorically - for reasons that I think are
obvious to list members in general, I don't really expect anything more than
more repetition of what you've said in the past.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
