Cross-Cultural Research

Insight is sought into the usefulness and comparability of an intelligence test for schoolchildren living in India and in the Netherlands. A Dutch test, the Revisie Amsterdamse Kinder Intelligentie Test (RAKIT), was adapted to the Indian situation (Indian Child Intelligence Test [ICIT]). Using the ICIT and the RAKIT, 612 Indian children and 1,007 Dutch children were tested, respectively. The average test scores for the ICIT group were lower in a number of subtests; however, coefficients of internal consistency and stability for the ICIT and RAKIT were satisfactory, varying from 0.84 to 0.94. Results of a factor analysis showed that both test batteries have a clear psychometric equivalence, making comparable test interpretations possible. Predictive validities for ICIT and RAKIT were high (0.56 and 0.48, respectively), with reading ability as a criterion.

In this article, I examine the interrelationship between craft specialization, technological complexity, the gendered division of labor, and the role of trade. I take as my example the craft of weaving, a gendered craft that has long been associated with women (Barber, 1994). I examine the argument regarding technological complexity and craft specialization and also address how these issues affect the gendered division of labor.

Universality of the simple consonant-vowel (CV) syllable probably reflects its status as a prototype syllable facilitative of oral communication. Previous research has shown that in a world sample of 53 (relatively) independent languages, CV syllables were more frequent in warm than cold climate regions. The rationale proposed for this was that people in warm climates, as inhabitants of outdoor cultures, would on average engage in more distal communication than would people in cold (indoor) climates and that such distal communication would create a need for optimal transmittal of messages—that is, frequent usage of the CV syllable. The present study replicated the previous result within four language families, finding the same trend of higher CV frequency in warm climate areas. A secondary finding in the original investigation, that CV scores for languages with writing systems were lower than those for languages of nonliterate societies, also was upheld in the current study.

New language and region codes are developed for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. The region codes were developed previously with a different sample and tested against social structure data. The language codes incorporate information from recent publications on language history and are presented at multiple levels, providing information about the taxonomic relationships among languages.

Cultural traditions (including languages) are transmitted across generations through learning by individuals in interaction with other members of the social groups to which they belong. Such groups are analogous to biological demes whose genetic heritage is transmitted across generations by the procreative interactions of their members. Cultural traditions and human biological demes coevolve like symbionts in mutual interdependency. There are many parallel processes, outlined here, in biological and cultural evolution. Basic in the content of cultures are understandings about the conduct of activities as the units of coordinated purposeful social behavior that provide the contexts for the emergence, maintenance, and modification of cultural traditions. Students of culture have yet to set necessary standards for controlled, systematic ethnographic research of a kind that will provide the database needed for a developed theory of cultural evolution.

During the 1970s, anthropologist Mary Douglas developed a twodimensional framework for cultural comparisons: (a) grid or constraint by rules, and (b) group or incorporation into a bounded social unit. According to Douglas and her colleagues, the four grid/ group types constitute stable social configurations that are associated with distinctive values or ideologies: individualism, fatalism, hierarchy, and egalitarianism. The theory has inspired a great deal of elaboration, numerous intrasocietal studies, some controlled comparisons between social units in different societies, and some limited cross-national studies. Although plausible, the framework has not been subjected to extensive cross-cultural testing. This article addresses a preliminary question in the more rigorous crosscultural testing of the framework: Are grid, group, and ideology empirically separate dimensions as Douglas contends? A pilot study employing factor analysis of precoded variables from the 60-culture Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) probability sample file suggests that they may be. Further steps in testing this theoretical framework are proposed.