Research and publishing issues in large scale cross‐national studies

Abstract

Recently there has been a significant increase in the number of academic international research teams (AIRTs) which are conducting large scale cross‐national research studies. These efforts hold much potential to advance international comparative research. However, there are a number of issues associated with these studies that rarely occur in other research efforts. The purpose of this manuscript is to articulate a number of these issues which can be categorized into two main groups, research methodology and publishing. Research methodology issues include the comparability and matching of samples, the timing of data collection, and the comparability of research instruments. Publishing issues include manuscript length, the timing of publications, and cross‐cultural authorship issues. It is essential that these issues are addressed if the field is to reap the full benefits of these large cross‐national studies.