Do Between-Culture Differences Really Mean that People are Different?

Abstract

Statistically significant differences in culture means may or may not reflect practically important differences between people of different cultures. To determine whether differences between culture means represent meaningful differences between individuals, further data analyses involving measures of cultural effect sizes are necessary. In this article the authors recommend four such measures and demonstrate their efficacy on two data sets from previously published studies. They argue for their use in future cross-cultural research as a complement to traditional tests of mean differences.