In this concluding chapter, we reflect on some of the challenges confronting researchers who seek to understand peer relationships within a cultural context. We focus specifically on some of the methodological issues that have been raised in the chapters and implications of these issues for future study. The chapters in this volume illustrate some of the methodological advances in the study of culture and social behavior, as well as the methodological pluralism that characterizes the field. In the following sections, we will discuss: (a) the assessment of cultural influence using between-group comparisons, (b) cultural psychology, and (c) developmental perspectives.

Equivalence and Biases in Cross-Cultural Comparisons

Many of the methodological discussions focusing on culture have addressed the difficulty of making valid inferences from comparisons of multiple cultures. A basic assumption underlying the work in the field is that the variation in the social or psychological functioning of individuals in different settings may indicate the causal influence of culture on individuals. Perhaps foremost among the issues discussed in the methodological literature in cross-cultural psychology is the need to systematically sample cultures on theoretical grounds so that the cultural groups represent variations in the theoretically relevant cultural dimension.

Although some advocates of theory-based sampling of cultures, such Van den Vijver and Leung (1997), recognize the value of two-culture comparisons when researchers have a compelling theoretical reason for comparing the two cultures, any two cultures are likely to vary on so many dimensions that it is difficult to isolate the elements that are responsible for differences between groups (Jahoda & Krewer, 1997).