Welcome to PSYC 434
Conducting Research Across Cultures | Trimester 1, 2026
Prof Joseph Bulbulia | Victoria University of Wellington
Assessments
| Assessment | CLOs | Weight | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lab diaries (8 × 1.25%) | 1, 2, 3 | 10% | Weekly (satisfactory/not) |
| In-class test 1 | 2 | 20% | 22 April (w7) |
| In-class test 2 | 2, 3 | 20% | 20 May (w11) |
| In-class presentation | 1, 2, 3 | 10% | 27 May (w12) |
| Research report (Option A or B) | 1, 2, 3 | 40% | 30 May (Fri) |
- Seminar: Wednesdays, 14:10–17:00, Easterfield Building EA120
- Schedule: see the Schedule page for topics, readings, and assignments
- Lectures: weekly content pages contain slides, recordings, and lab materials
- Tests: in the same room as the seminar (bring a pen/pencil, no devices)
Contact
| Course coordinator | Prof Joseph Bulbulia, joseph.bulbulia@vuw.ac.nz |
| Office | EA324 |
| R help | Boyang Cao, caoboya@myvuw.ac.nz |
Course Description
From the VUW course catalogue:
This course focuses on theoretical and practical challenges for conducting research involving individuals from more than one cultural background or ethnicity. Topics include defining and measuring culture; developing culture-sensitive studies; choice of language and translation; communication styles and bias; questionnaire and interview design; qualitative and quantitative data analysis for cultural and cross-cultural research; minorities, power, and ethics in cross-cultural research; and ethno-methodologies and indigenous research methodologies. Appropriate background for this course: PSYC 338.
Course Learning Objectives
In this advanced course, students develop foundational skills in cross-cultural psychological research with a strong emphasis on causal inference.
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Programming in R. Students will learn the basics of programming in the statistical language R, gaining essential computational tools for psychological research. These skills lay the foundation for applying data analysis techniques in a causal inference framework and beyond. This year we will try something different, introducing you to coding with LLM agents.
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Understanding causal inference. Students will develop a robust understanding of causal inference concepts and approaches, with particular emphasis on how they mitigate common pitfalls in cross-cultural research. We focus, first, on how to ask questions in comparative psychology, and (only then), how to answer them. This takes to the design of studies, analysing data, and drawing appropriately confident conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships in comparative research.
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Understanding measurement in comparative settings. Quite a lot of this course is devoted to concepts of measurement in psychological research. Although we will cover classical techniques for constructing and validating psychometrically sound measures across cultures, we will also clarify why statistical tests alone are insufficient to ensure we are measuring as we hope.
Licence
© 2026 Joseph Bulbulia. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence.