Thread: What is your cultural orientation and how does it relate to the level of trust you have in others?

• Hello!
• To complete my master degree in Social Psychology I'm currently doing research on cultural differences in levels of social trust. In order to collect enough data I need respondents from the US, Israel, India and the Netherlands who fill in an online questionnaire. This questionnaire is in English, only takes about 10-15 minutes to complete and can be found here -> https://nlpsych.qual...1FfI6W50xuTtyv3. By participation you are doing a great job for me and psychology, thanks in advance!
• PS: Feel free to share this survey with anyone.

I wish you luck with your investigation. I am curious. How do you ensure that the respondents are from where they say they are? Surely the results could be contaminated by non-eligible participants responding?

Thank you John! I definitely agree that survey's are vulnerable to these sorts of contamination, especially online survey's. Of course using an online survey also has some technological advantages to minimize these artifacts. Among some other digital tricks to ensure the respondent's location I will for example check the used public IP address, assuming respondents will not go through the trouble to use a fake one.

Why did you pick a science forum to do this? Do you think that being the type of person who would post on such a forum could affect the level of trust and therefore skew your results? For example, what if a a large number of us were bullied and picked on when we were younger because of our interests. Maybe there are a higher percentage of people here who have difficulty with social interaction or reading social signals compared with the world in general.

I'm just offering these as possibilities; I don't know if they area true or not. However, they would affect level of trust, regardless of nationality and would make your results invalid.

I wouldn't use a forum on a specialized subject to get a sample for a psychology study. The fact that you are using a group of people who have consciously chosen to associate because of some interest means that you are not getting a sample representative of the general population.

Hi Alec, thank you for your thoughts. It is absolutely true that these kinds of specialized fora's could attract people with specific characteristics that could influence the results. To be sure that my respondent pool is more representative of the general population this forum is of course just one of the many places I am requesting people to participate. Although I must admit that I think fora like these will attract more people interested in these kinds of subject and are therefore in general more willing to respond to my request.

By using numerous forums you still open yourself up to surveying a compartmentalized portion of the population. You generally won't find anyone who lacks educational interests on most forums, nor those who aren't familiar with the internet "namely the elderly and poor". You also are unlikely to stumble upon those working 2 jobs, or even those with 1 stressful job.

Again, this forum is just one of the many places I am requesting people to participate. I am aware of the fact that not everybody is familiar enough with the internet to be reached by one of my posts and am therefore using different methods to approach people to see if they are willing to fill in the survey.

Problem is Shlunka - the issues you raise are inherent in any study of humans and taken to the nth degree means that no study is worthwhile. Most social psychological research doesn't seek to generalise results across populations because its obviously wrong to do so. Its also one of the obvious flaws of experimental psychology that they blatantly generalise their results across populations but somehow no-one seems to want to care about that......

Thank you for pointing out the fact that these challenges are generally inherent to the study of human behavior, especially cross-cultural ones, and always must be taken in to account when interpreting any data. It is however the individual responsibility of all researchers to do so and to state that no-one seems to care seems to me like blatantly generalizing your own conclusions across a population of psychologists. To be clear about the present research: although I am trying to get a data set that is as diverse as possible by no means I expect this set to be representative of the entire cultures of investigation.

Originally Posted by LuciDreaming

Problem is Shlunka - the issues you raise are inherent in any study of humans and taken to the nth degree means that no study is worthwhile. Most social psychological research doesn't seek to generalise results across populations because its obviously wrong to do so. Its also one of the obvious flaws of experimental psychology that they blatantly generalise their results across populations but somehow no-one seems to want to care about that......

Definitely! Ha! jocular

I have done a couple of the on-line surveys that were requested by various persons doing research toward their educational projects. Those ones were far too general to be of interest to me, as a respondent. Looking at your link, the opening parameters are more specific than previous surveys but I live in Yukon, Canada, which is not one of the countries you are seeking input from. All the best with your multiple venues for seeking input. Getting the public to engage in these things can be a challenge for any individual or group in today's fast-paced world.

I am dense. Are we looking for trust here as exhibited by some individuals unconditionally, by others sometimes, and still others never? jocular

oh heavens...just do the survey and help the lad out!! SHEESH!

Originally Posted by edzon

• Hello!
• To complete my master degree in Social Psychology I'm currently doing research on cultural differences in levels of social trust. In order to collect enough data I need respondents from the US, Israel, India and the Netherlands who fill in an online questionnaire. This questionnaire is in English, only takes about 15 minutes to complete and can be found here -> https://nlpsych.qual...1FfI6W50xuTtyv3. By participation you are doing a great job for me and psychology, thanks in advance!
• PS: Feel free to share this survey with anyone.

I did it. Now you know my darkest thoughts and erotic dreams. *cough*

Survey was about 5 minutes tops...well if you can read!......

by the way..one of your countrymen was one of my Christmas guests last Christmas.....having a daughter in Zurich, tends to lend me to international strays for Christmas!! it's quite fun!...So far....Germany, Australia and Amsterdam!.....don't know what will be this year!

Originally Posted by scheherazade

Looking at your link, the opening parameters are more specific than previous surveys but I live in Yukon, Canada, which is not one of the countries you are seeking input from. All the best with your multiple venues for seeking input.

Thanks, Canada seems very interesting to me regarding general levels of social trust but unfortunately I had to limit my field of research to four countries. Hope I get the opportunity to extend my research to Canada in the future.

Originally Posted by babe

I did it. Now you know my darkest thoughts and erotic dreams. *cough*

Survey was about 5 minutes tops...well if you can read!......

by the way..one of your countrymen was one of my Christmas guests last Christmas.....having a daughter in Zurich, tends to lend me to international strays for Christmas!! it's quite fun!...So far....Germany, Australia and Amsterdam!.....don't know what will be this year!

Thanks very much for helping me out, hope you get a nice present for Christmas this year!

Originally Posted by edzon

Originally Posted by babe

I did it. Now you know my darkest thoughts and erotic dreams. *cough*

Survey was about 5 minutes tops...well if you can read!......

by the way..one of your countrymen was one of my Christmas guests last Christmas.....having a daughter in Zurich, tends to lend me to international strays for Christmas!! it's quite fun!...So far....Germany, Australia and Amsterdam!.....don't know what will be this year!

Thanks very much for helping me out, hope you get a nice present for Christmas this year!

You are welcome!

Having my kids is my best present.