The Cross-National Social Survey Method

The purposes of this paper are to discuss 1)sampling design and selection procedures and 2)the task of the interviewer in carrying out household visits, which is an element of survey practice. This discussion is based on continuous cross-national studies conducted by the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, beginning with a survey of Japanese-Americans in Honolulu in the 1970s, up to and including a1993survey in Holland. In cross-national surveys which use social data, we face problems of standardization at each stage of the surveys: the definition of population, sampling itself, the survey method, construction of the questionnaire, the selection of questions, and the translation of selected questions to retain comparability. Although these problems are common in domestic surveys, in cross-national comparison there are additional unique issues. Two of these relate to sampling design and subject selection. For sampling design, we make every effort to select samples to meet theoretical requirements. However, in cross-national surveys, there are some issues which can rarely satisfy these conditions. Here, we present in concrete form outlines of sampling designs for surveys we have conducted several countries and regions for our cross-national studies.