Opportunities and challenges in the expansion of cross-national survey research

Past decades have witnessed significant expansion in the reach of public opinion surveys. While the need for comparable data from increasingly heterogeneous countries has led some to infer that survey practices must be centralized and identical, the explicit inclusion of variation between countries may well improve the enterprise of cross-national research. This paper examines some of the challenges endemic to the continued global spread of cross-national research, both at the level of cross-national survey bodies and the analyst using second-hand data. With regard to the former, we examine recent changes in the ‘product’ of comparative survey research, and the increasing recognition that improvements in both survey quality and equivalence of meaning may come from localized understandings and specifications. We also explore how individual analysts might provide important substantive and methodological insights into the broader enterprise of comparative work, further advancing decolonized methodologies by devolving methodological innovation from survey developers located in prosperous countries to analysts with second-hand data spread across a broader geography.