Methodological issues in international HR management research

Methodological issues can be particularly thorny considerations in international HR management research. If not addressed properly, they can severely undermine valid inferences and limit the ability to generalize to populations of interest. More generally, they can lead to unsound recommendations regarding the practice of international management. This article considers five such methodological issues: translation, conceptual, functional, and metric equivalence when assessment or survey questions are used in different languages and cultural contexts; the use of multiple, overlapping constructs and common methods bias; limitations of measures of internal-consistency reliability (coefficient alpha); sampling strategies; and non-response bias. The article defines each issue, identifies the implications of failure to address it, and suggests alternative strategies to ensure valid inferences.