DESCRIBING CULTURAL DIVERSITY: A COMPARISON OF RESEARCH STRATEGIES

Abstract

This study explored methods of identifying and describing diversity related to cultural data in educational settings using the individual profile of variables as a unit of study more appropriate than the variable when making decisions regarding instruction of small groups of individual students or when designing curriculum. Method. The construct of culture as the organization of diversity as opposed to culture as the replication of uniformity (Wallace, 1961a) was taken as an organizing principle for the study. Two research strategies (a data processing technique and a descriptive conceptualization) which matched the two definitions of diversity, variability in form and distinction in kind, were applied to pre-existing data sets, cognitive style, and goals and values, collected from a single set of 67 subjects in a major city in the American southwest. Results. Central Instance Analysis, the data processing technique that matched the variability in form definition of diversity produced a prototype and groups of increasing difference from the prototype. Unexpected variations in the form of the prototype occurred. Q-Factor Analysis is not recommended for further use as a data processing technique to match the distinction in kind definition of diversity because it places unrealistic restrictions on the very practical data sets educators might want to use. Although there are no specific hypotheses regarding outliers in the study, information about outliers was generated.