In the last few months I’ve debriefed several dozen people from around the globe who work in four different internationally-distributed organizations in my company. There were two groups from Australia, and individuals from India, Germany, China, Japan. and the Middle East. Some of them asked about what they termed “cultural bias” of Birkman. I didn’t know what we know about where it is biased. So that is one question I have for all of you. What DO we already know about where Birkman is culturally biased? If we’re starting the list, here are some things I picked up:
Several said they don’t have many of those jobs.
Several noticed wording issues. They took the assessment what Birkman thinks is English but the Australians and Indians have their own version)
Australians say they are socialized to not stand out or promote themselves. They call it the “tall poppy syndrome”. The tall poppy will be cut down. They said something to the effect that the Birkman implied it was desirable to stand out.
What have you run into and how do you handle it?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
International clients note "cultural bias"
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Cultural adaptations are what make the instrument fluid. In Japan the way one deals in one-on-one relationships looks very different from people in the USA as well as those in China. Asking and finding out how each culture interprets the definitions is part of learning how to best adapt the instrument to the culture. I have asked at Birkman about some of these areas and they have some answers tho I have not been given any hard data. Both hard and actual instances serve well when working with different cultures.
ReplyDeleteWould you want a culturally adjusted set of "socially desireable" scores?
ReplyDeleteI deal with a diverse international clientele, including 'Americans' with diverse multicultural experience,'Latin Americans' of diverse nationalities, and 'Europeans' with diverse exposure to indigenous cultures, customs, languages, educational and professional backgrounds and lifestyles... and let's not forget 'gypsies' like myself that resist strict geographical & cultural classification.
ReplyDeleteIn my work with the Birkman, the impact of social desirability is mostly relevant when I come across explaining (not interpreting)reversals, i.e., stress going to the less desirable behavior accurately captured by a 25 or 75. Are we stirring murky waters?
Using 'appropriate language' items in the Method's input is desirable but not necessarily statistically relevant.
More important are studies to create and validate attributes for persons in that environment based on their item responses to the scales (validity studies).
And I miss more basic statistical descriptors like standard deviations and medians provided per component, anywhere.
It seems like much work still needs to be done !
This is a great thread! Thanks to all contributors for sharing your personal experiences about cultural diversity and The Birkman. A couple of points I'd like to add:
ReplyDeleteWhile the database is still growing, there are sufficient data from many different cultures to be able to suggest that "social desirability" is fairly constant across cultures. We know this from the fact that the Most People means (Need / Stress) don't vary much from culture to culture; at least the variation so far is statistically insignificant. However, it is also true that the Self means DO vary by culture in some instances, suggesting that what we would understand as social desirability for one culture might look a little different in another. Let me illustrate with an example: As a group, Asian cultures (especially Japanese) average almost 10 points higher than western cultures on the self, or Usual side of Esteem. So while the Need mean is still about 50 (just like other cultures), it probably makes sense to "raise the bar" a little to reflect the cultural difference in behavior. In other words, an extremely low Esteem behavior might be just as offensive to someone of Asian culture as an extremely high score in western cultures, indicating that social desirability is not the same for both cultures.
I agree with Alan that we could profit from having more access to the statistics. I suspect -- but cannot say for sure -- that the standard deviation of the Most People Esteem scale is smaller for Asian cultures than for western cultures. If that's true, then the above would make even more sense. So "yes," Jennifer, in my opinion a culturally adjusted set of scores would be very helpful to our understanding and application.
In the meantime, a couple of things you can do to broaden your scope in this regard: 1) check the ethnic differences as reported in the "Birkman Method Manual" (ethnicity is certainly not the same as culture, but you can extrapolate without too much danger); and 2) conduct your own studies. If you have access to as few as 35 reports from one culture, a Comprint is a quick and easy way to see if there might be differences worth paying attention to. I would also ask anyone doing such "research" to please consider sharing your findings with us here in the blog.