Generalizing with equity: the Busara research agenda on contextualisation and cross-cultural measurement in the Global South

Abstract

The events of recent years have made especially plain the inequities between Global North and South. One such inequality is in the way some social groups are often missing from the data, so that knowledge, policies, services and products do not take proper account of them. This bias exists strongly in the conceptual development of the behavioral sciences, and it makes the research base fragile, with papers making claims of universality that do not stand up to scrutiny. In order to deal with concerns about replication, external validity and the strength of this research base, there are now many initiatives to improve experimentation in the social sciences. However, truly generalizable findings come about when institutions are present in the long term to aggregate across studies. That works even better when those institutions have a deep understanding of the contexts in which they seek to generalise from and to. Busara was founded as an institution to apply context-specific behavioral science literature, and this work has been a constant throughout our history. We now propose to launch a structured three-year Open Science investigation of the gaps in the understanding of canonical patterns of behavior, cognitive processes, preferences, beliefs, and decision-making processes in the Global South, comparing our work in multiple contexts and exploring variance across time, place, and demography. At the conclusion of this project, we will begin integrating our findings into wider theories of global cultural, psychological and microeconomic heterogeneity.

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