Phase 2: Quantitative Research

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4.5.2 Phase 2: Quantitative Research

Any quantitative study pertains to a careful consideration of its rigour, and from perspective of cross-cultural research considerations of equivalence at design and analysis stage are crucial to making meaningful comparisons across cultures (Malhotra, 1996). With this in mind, this section reviews the key steps taken to minimise potential sources of bias and error during data collection and analysis stages of phase 2. It also acknowledges potential sources of bias as limitations.

4.5.2.1 Reliability Considerations

In quantitative research reliability refers to the consistency of the researcher’s decisions regarding minimising measurement errors. In cross-cultural and cross-national research measurement errors may stem from inconsistency of how measures were obtained and inconsistency of assessment of how measurement tools behave across samples, leading to invalid conclusions. Thus, establishing equivalence (lack of bias) is a pre-requisite for analysis of any cross-cultural quantitative data (Berry, 1969). He and Van de Vijver’s (2012) Taxonomy of Equivalence identifies two levels of bias: method bias and construct and item bias. To provide evidence of effort to obtain cross-culturally comparable data and sound measures, steps taken to minimise error at the design, data collection and analysis stages were recorded in this chapter and are summarised below.

1. Method bias refers to the nuisance factors that derive from sampling, features of the instrument or administration. The following steps were taken to safeguard from these nuisances:

- Selection of research contexts (UK and Ukraine) and sampling frame was guided by conceptualisation and the research goals (Douglas and Craig, 2001). Selection of a nonprobabilistic sampling frame assured sampling cross-country comparable populations by mainstream-migrant/diasporic background criterion to satisfy definition of the target population as multicultural marketplace. It was acknowledged that the sampling frame is not fully representative of the countries’ overall populations. Therefore, while the results may not be generalisable to the country levels, they may provide valuable insights into the relationship between differences in cultural

147 identity orientations within consumer spheres of multicultural marketplaces and culture-informed consumption.

- In terms of safeguarding from the instrument bias, instrument translation-back translation was conducted by a native Russian speaker who works as a professional interpreter. The instrument was subsequently verified for translation nuisances and response style through a pilot study in both countries and consultations with local experts. In addition, items and measures were presented in the questionnaire in a random order.

- To safeguard from administration bias, same administration format was adopted in both country sites. A self-completion format of administration, assurance of protecting respondents’ anonymity and assurance that there are no right or wrong answers to the posed questions were implemented to minimise social desirability and interviewer bias (Randall et al., 1993; Van de Vijver, 2001; Malhotra and Birks, 2007).

- To safeguard from measurement errors arising from process and recording bias, returned questionnaires were audited for inconsistencies and the final data set was assessed for existence of patterns in missing data. It is acknowledged that, as any study measuring social phenomena, this study is subject to the risk of measurement error arising through conditioning (i.e. act of measurement itself changing the subject under investigation).

However conditioning effects are difficult to avoid completely and to an extent all social science studies are prone to conditioning risks (Warren and Halpern-Manners, 2012).

2. Construct bias entails that construct being measured in the study is not equivalent across cultures. Threats to construct equivalence occur on theoretical and measurement levels. That is, the construct may not have the same conceptual meaning across cultures in the study or have different structure. Item bias refers to an item of a measure having a different psychological meaning across cultures. These differences can arise from poor translation or inapplicability of item contents to the cultural context. Steps taken to safeguard from construct and item bias were:

148 - With regards to the new constructs, the undertaking of a multi-disciplinary literature review and of an exploratory in-depth qualitative study (Study 1) provided insights to the evolved meanings assigned to Local, Global and Foreign cultures and elicited expressions of value assigned to these cultures in consumer identity discourses. These findings and extensive review of existing acculturation scales informed development of measurement items.

- Item development followed accepted guidelines (Brislin, 1970; Netemeyer et. al., 2003), and clarity and validity of the developed items was verified with expert judges. The English and translated-back translated items in Russian were evaluated for translation equivalence and nuisances by local experts in Ukraine, to safeguard from item bias arisen from translation.

- Obtained measures were rigorously assessed for dimensionality, factor structure and validity on an emic level by following the established processes of scale purification and validation on pancountry samples separately first (Netemeyer et al., 2003; Bearden et al., 2011; De Vellis, 2012). Subsequently, assessment of configural, metric and scalar invariance was conducted following established guidelines of measurement invariance assessment to safeguard from item and construct bias (Steenkamp and Baumgartner, 1998).

- With regards to existing measures utilised in the study, use of extensively cross-culturally validated scales served as an initial safeguard, and subsequent validation of these measures in Confirmatory Factor analysis assured acceptability of the measures to the study sample (Ping, 2004).

A further consideration concerning threats to reliability is interpretation of statistical inferences. To ensure and provide evidence of reliability and validity of the utilised measures, the intermediary and final results of measure validation are reported in Chapter 5 (p:151), along with the assumptions concerning interpretation of model fit statistics that served basis for the decisions on measure reliability and validity. To ensure and provide evidence of considerations made to safeguard reliability in the analysis of grouped data, considerations of effect size and levels of significance set to

149 safeguard the appropriateness and accuracy of interpretation errors in multivaraite analysis of variance are reported in Chapter 6 (p:214), to provide the reader with the account of decision-making when interpreting results.

4.5.2.2 Validity Considerations

Validity is concerned with the extent to which a measure accurately represents what it is supposed to represent and that it operates in a set of relationships representative of the developed theory. The process through which construct and nomological validity of the measures utilised to test the propositions and hypotheses regarding the relationship between Consumer Multiculturation and consumption behaviour was assessed as detailed in Section 4.4.2.2, with results reported in the next Chapter 5.

Concerning the external validity of the findings and the developed theory of Consumer Multiculturation, it was acknowledged that due to the cross-national nature of the research the study sample could not be statistically representative of the target population. However, it was argued that drawing a pool of consumers with diverse backgrounds in both countries and ensuring comparability of both country samples composition by mainstream/migrant background addressed the main goal of the study to consider cultural identity orientation strategies observable in consumer spheres of multicultural marketplaces. While generalisability of the study results to target population is not possible in statistical terms, the results are valuable in shedding light on the diverse forms of cultural identity orientation strategies that inform consumption in multicultural marketplaces.

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4.6 Conclusion

This chapter presented the methodological decisions selected to test the propositions and hypotheses developed in Chapter 3 (p:60). It justified ontological appropriateness of the realism paradigm, selected research design and presented an outline of the four studies undertaken and their objectives. Next, it presented the data collection and analysis decisions for the two main studies, Study 1 (in-depth interviews) and Study 4 (survey). Finally, reliability and validity were considered from the perspectives relevant to qualitative and quantitative research, and steps followed to minimise bias and error were summarised. Limitations of each study were acknowledged as part of these considerations. The next part of the thesis reports the findings and results of the analysis. Chapter 5 reports findings of the qualitative study, reports the development and validation of the measures and quantitative results of integrated operationalisation of the developed measures within the hypothesised Consumer Multicultural Identity Orientation (CMIO) Matrix. Chapter 6 presents the results of testing the relationships between Consumer Multiculturation expressed in cultural identity orientation strategies on culture-informed consumption.

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Chapter 5