Page 127 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Designs and Methods of Research

commercial cooperation partners is limited. If cultural differences con-
cerning the organization of research are detected in the process, one can
describe these problems in the resulting report. It is nearly impossible to
rectify administration bias.

CONCLUSION
The methodology of cultural comparisons in the social sciences has been
developed by several disciplines at the same time. Astonishingly, the
communication of findings across disciplines has been very limited. But
research into political communication could benefit from these efforts
of the other disciplines, due to its interdisciplinary orientation. The aim
of this chapter has been to compile, systemize, and combine some of the
methodological approaches to international comparative work.
It should be made clear, how difficult it is to establish validity in inter-
national comparisons. Even in unicultural research, establishing validity
can be seen as one of the major problems, but when “extending the fron-
tier” these problems increase significantly. As possible research topics
are integrated into culture-specific social, political, economic, legal, and
media contexts, the research team has to ask whether they can be treated
as equivalent and, consequently, as comparable. Given at least functional
equivalence, a comparison of cultures can be undertaken and will pro-
vide some valid insight. But does this need for equivalence automatically
imply that the researcher has to know every similarity and difference in
advance?
The procedures presented demand considerable effort, but in-depth
analysis shows that there is light at the end of the tunnel. For exam-
ple, peripheral constructs may be omitted when testing for equivalence.
Nevertheless, the research report should include a detailed explanation
why these constructs are more or less irrelevant to the research question.
When the relevance of a construct is merely moderate, some plausibility
checks may suffice, that is, some culture-specific references should be in-
tegrated without undertaking preliminary empirical research. However,
comparative researchers should be very cautious when limiting them-
selves to small numbers of basic factors, so as not to risk excessively
curbing the explanatory power of their study. Instead, the integration of
aset of context factors can notably improve the scientific worthiness of
astudy.

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