| With increasing globalization, cross-national economic research has increased as well. In marketing research cross-national surveys provide essential information for internationally operating firms. However, results from different countries or cultures cannot be compared directly due to the diverse backgrounds of the respondents. One important problem in cross-national surveys, concerns the occurrence of response styles. That is, the assignment of ratings regardless of the actual preferences but due to, possibly cultural, backgrounds of the individual. Response styles distort the results based on rating data and they prohibit meaningful comparisons between different studies in a cross-national context. In this research we aim to (1) study occurrence and consequences of response styles in international research, (2) systematically appraise existing methodology for detecting and correcting for response styles, (3) develop novel (nonparametric) methodology that allows quick and easy assessment and corrections of response style problems, (4) detecting subgroups of respondents that may vary in their response styles. |
