Response Strategies and Response Styles in Cross-Cultural Surveys

This article addresses the following research questions: Do respondents participating in cross-cultural surveys differ in their response style when responding to attitude statements? If so, are characteristics of the response process associated with their ethnicity and generation of immigration? To answer these questions we conducted a mixed method study. Quantitative analysis of a large representative sample of minorities in the Netherlands shows that cross-cultural differences in responding can partly be explained by a differential response style. These differences in response style turn out to be related to the generation of immigration, both in the representative sample and in a purposively selected qualitative sample of persons of the same four cultural groups. Analysis of cognitive interviews reveals that respondents use three types of response strategies to overcome difficulties of responding to items in a cross-cultural survey. These response strategies are also related to a respondent's generation of immigration.