Asking questions across cultures

I spent the morning meeting with graduate students in the Department of Psychology at National Taiwan University. The students were research assistants working with Professor Jenny Su. During the drive up to main campus, I was reminded of another famous view--Stanford University--where I first began doing cross-cultural research with Professor Hazel Markus. The campus was bustling with hundreds, maybe thousands of students rushing to get to class on bicycles. It was pretty exciting to be at a different university. I gave a lecture on qualitative research and conducting interviews. We focused on the importance of asking questions and the complexity of cross-cultural differences between interviewing in the United States versus doing interviews in Taiwan. Interviewing students about their feelings and psychological experiences is a potentially stigmatizing experience so interviewers need to be sensitive to how their responses, questions, body language, manner, and style of interaction may contribute to the validity and authenticity of the data. These same issues are true in counseling psychology where questions and follow-up questions deeply influence the dynamics of the client and counselor. Lack of emotional expression may also not necessarily be a sign of lack of emotions. In fact, cultural norms around expression of feelings (publicly or to a stranger) may dictate what is shared and how. Thus, poses one of the dilemmas of conducting research; How do you measure or research complex psychological constructs when the very act of answering questions or responding to a survey limits the very construct were are seeking to understand. I will be returning to NTU to continue the lecture and to continue to explore these issues.