On the Comparability of Meaningful Stimuli in Cross-Cultural Research

In essence the problem of translation is one of equivalence and variance. The focus of this paper is on the problem of maximizing equivalence. Some existing data on translation equivalence are discussed in an effort to destroy some misconceptions and to indicate the needs for empirical data which will help the investigator answer the question: How do we know we are asking the same question in two or more settings? Six problem areas are discussed: (1) translation of non-verbal stimuli; (2) stimulus complexity and sample size; (3) stimulus ambiguity; (4) verbal stimuli; (5) back translation, an iterative approach; and (6) bilinguals and bilingualism.