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Cultural intelligence: A theory-based, short form measure

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Abstract

This article reports the development and validation of a theory-based, short form measure of cultural intelligence (SFCQ). The SFCQ captures the original theoretical intent of a multifaceted culture general form of intelligence that is related to effective intercultural interactions. The validity of the scale is established with 3526 participants in five language groups from around the world. Results provide evidence for construct and criterion-related validity of the measure, and indicate that cultural intelligence is a single latent factor reflected in three intermediate facets. In support of construct validity the measure is modestly related to but distinct from emotional intelligence and personality and correlates positively with several indicators of multicultural experience. With regard to criterion-related validity, it relates as predicted to several dimensions of intercultural effectiveness. Implications for the measurement and understanding of culture and the influence of culture on management practice are discussed.

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Notes

  1. A more detailed articulation of the theory supporting this conceptualization can be found in Thomas et al. (2008).

  2. A complete report of this analysis is presented in Thomas et al. (2012).

  3. Samples 1 and 2 were recruited using the online data collection website Amazon Mechanical Turk (M-Turk). M-Turk is a relatively new website that coordinates between workers and requesters on tasks requiring human intelligence to complete. It has become popular for data collection among social scientists because it is inexpensive and rapid. Participants recruited at M-Turk are at least as representative of the US population as traditional subject pools and data obtained are at least as reliable as those obtained using traditional methods and magnitude of effects in judgment and decision making studies is not different to that obtained using traditional subject pools (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011; Paolacci, Chandler, & Ipeirotis, 2010). Participants in Sample 1 resided in the United States and participants in Sample 2 resided in India. They were paid 50 US cents for their participation. Participants in Sample 3 were invited through the connections of former part-time EMBA (Executive MBA) and Masters students from a large Business School in France and they chose to complete the survey in either English or French. Participants in Sample 4 were EMBA students in a large Australian university who volunteered to complete the survey. Participants in Sample 5 were undergraduate students in Australia and Indonesia and their respective family members; data were collected in English and Indonesian, respectively. Participants in Sample 6 were Indonesian migrants living in Australia and they chose to complete the survey in either English or Indonesian. All participants were placed in a draw to receive one iPad mini. Participants in Sample 7 were international students studying in Australia who completed the survey in English. They were paid AUD$10.00 for participation as part of a larger study. Sample 8 consisted of employees in Turkey who completed the survey online in Turkish. Participants with work experience were recruited from graduate programs and through alumni rosters at four universities and participated voluntarily. Participants in Sample 9 were alumni of a large university recruited with assistance from the Alumni Office on a voluntary basis (N=85) and customers intercepted in a large shopping mall (N=158) in Hong Kong. The shoppers were given a US$1.3 cash voucher as an incentive after completion of the questionnaire. They completed the survey in traditional Chinese. Participants in Sample 10 were students enrolled in Masters level courses in Europe, Japan, and China who completed the survey in English. European participants were enrolled in the CEMS (formerly the Community of European Management Schools) Master in International Management Program at several European Universities; Chinese and Japanese participants were in similar programs in China and Japan, respectively. Participants in Sample 11 were working professionals in France contacted through one author’s professional networks. They volunteered to complete the survey in either English or French. Participants in Sample 12 were part-time MBA students enrolled in a large southern university in the United States who volunteered to complete the survey in English in exchange for partial course credit. Participants in Sample 13 were general Masters (who have demonstrated accuracy in previous tasks) from Amazon Mechanical Turk. They resided in the United States and were paid US$1 for participation. The majority (83.9%) of participants in Sample 14 were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and were paid US$2 for participation. The remainder of the participants in Sample 14 was recruited through authors’ professional networks and volunteered to complete the survey. Samples 2, 6, 8, 9, and 12 were relatively culturally homogeneous, while other samples are multicultural, represented by larger numbers of country of birth.

  4. The details of this analysis are available from the first author.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and from the Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

    David C Thomas & Mila B Lazarova

  2. IESE Business School, Barcelona, Spain

    Yuan Liao

  3. Department of Psychology & Faculty of Management, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Zeynep Aycan

  4. Human Resource Management, ESSEC Business School, Cergy-Pontoise, France

    Jean-Luc Cerdin

  5. UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Andre A Pekerti, Miriam Moeller & Tyler G Okimoto

  6. Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA

    Elizabeth C Ravlin

  7. WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria

    Günter K Stahl

  8. Department of Marketing, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, China

    Henry Fock

  9. Department of Marketing, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

    Denni Arli

  10. Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Fons van de Vijver

  11. Work-Well Unit, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa

    Fons van de Vijver

  12. School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Fons van de Vijver

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  1. David C Thomas
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  2. Yuan Liao
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  3. Zeynep Aycan
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  7. Günter K Stahl
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  8. Mila B Lazarova
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  11. Miriam Moeller
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  12. Tyler G Okimoto
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  13. Fons van de Vijver
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to David C Thomas.

Additional information

Accepted by Timothy Devinney, Guest Editor, 17 October 2014. This article has been with the authors for two revisions.

Appendices

APPENDIX A

SFCQ Scale

illustration

figure a

APPENDIX B

Measures Used in Validating SFCQ

EQ was measured by the 16-item EI scale developed by Wong and Law (2002) on a 5-point Likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree). Internal consistency reliability as measured by Cronbach’s α was 0.88.

Personality was measured on the Big Five personality traits (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness) with 50 marker items from the International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg, 1992). Each personality characteristic was measured by 10 items on a 5-point Likert scale (1=very inaccurate, 5=very accurate). Internal consistency reliability as measured by Cronbach’s α was α=0.88 for Extraversion, α=0.81 for Agreeableness, α=0.87 for Neuroticism, α=0.81 for Openness, and α=0.81 for Conscientiousness.

Intercultural effectiveness was measured by three items tapping key aspects of effectiveness in a cross-cultural context with a scale developed by Thomas et al. (2012) of specific relevance to the validation of cultural intelligence. This approach is based on research on successful adjustment to a foreign culture (Brislin, 1981; Cushner & Brislin, 1996; Ruben & Kealey, 1979) and expatriate adjustment and performance (e.g., Aycan, 1997; Tung & Varma, 2008). The literature in these areas has summarized the characteristics of effective intercultural interaction in an organizational context as (a) good personal adjustment indicated by feelings of contentment and well-being when interacting with culturally different others, (b) development and maintenance of good interpersonal relationships with culturally different others, and (c) the effective completion of task-related goals in an intercultural context. Based on this definition of intercultural effectiveness the 3-item scale was used to tapping each of the three elements. Responses were provided on a 5-point scale (1=disagree strongly, 5=agree strongly). The internal consistency reliability of the 3-item scale as measured by Cronbach’s α was 0.59. Given the breadth (high bandwidth) of the construct, we were not surprised with this level of internal consistency. Bandwidth is the amount of information obtained, while fidelity is the consistency of information. The idea of balancing bandwidth and fidelity in measures of this type has been widely discussed and has generally had broad acceptance (see, e.g., Chen, Meindl, & Hunt, 1997).

Sociocultural acculturation and adaptation was measured with two instruments in two different samples. We measured sociocultural acculturation with 20 items from the Acculturation Index (Ward & Rana-Deuba, 1999) in Sample 6 (Indonesian migrants in Australia). This scale measures how similar immigrants’ experiences and behaviors are to locals in the host country evaluated on a 7-point Likert scale (1=not at all similar, 7=very similar). Internal consistency reliability as measured by Cronbach’s α was 0.97. We used 20 items from the Sociocultural Adaptation Scale (Ward & Kennedy, 1999) in Sample 7 (international students in Australia). This scale measures the extent of difficulty people experience in a number of areas in the host culture, such as making friends and following rules, using a 5-point Likert scale (1=no difficulty, 5=extreme difficulty). Internal consistency reliability was 0.96.

Ethnocentrism was measured by the Generalized Ethnocentrism Scale developed by McCroskey and Neuliep (Neuliep, 2002; Neuliep & McCroskey, 1997). This scale contains 22 items (including 15 scoring items and 7 distractors) with a 5-point response scale (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree). It measures a person’s ethnocentrism regardless of his or her cultural background. Internal consistency reliability as measured by Cronbach’s α was 0.90.

Job performance was measured by a 4-item, self-rating scale consistent with similar measures used in previous studies (see Fletcher, Major, & Davis, 2008; Halbesleben, Wheeler, & Paustian-Underdahl, 2013; Shore, Cleveland, & Goldberg, 2003). Participants indicated how they felt their supervisor would rate their (1) overall performance, (2) problem solving performance, (3) leadership effectiveness, and (4) communication effectiveness on a 4-point scale (anchored by 1=below average to 4=outstanding). Internal consistency reliability as measured by Cronbach’s α was 0.81.

Attribution accuracy was measured by participants’ responses to the behavior of a protagonist depicted in two short videos. The two videos were scripted and filmed (see Thomas et al., 2012) based on scenarios derived from a large-scale survey (Smith & Hecker, 2006) of the most frequent failures in intercultural interactions. For example, one video involved indirect vs direct communication behavior and interpersonal space differences. Prior to filming, the scripts were pretested in two multicultural focus groups. Based on these reactions and the reactions of the multicultural research team, scripts were modified to convey a sense of mundane realism (Enzle & Schopflocher, 1978). The short videos (about 2 min each) were made by a professional film company and employed professional actors. Subsequent responses to the videos by focus groups confirmed the realism of the scenarios depicted.

The four choices of response to the video were constructed in a similar manner to the development of the choices offered in the original culture assimilator (Fiedler, Mitchell, & Triandis, 1971). The correct response among the four choices was established by an international panel of experts on intercultural behavior. The accuracy of participants’ scores was the sum of correct responses ranging from 0 to 2.

Demographics: Participants reported their age, gender, education level (1=primary school, 2=some secondary (high) school, 3=secondary (high) school, 4=some post-secondary (university/college/polytechnic), 5=university degree, 6=post-graduate degree (e.g., Masters, Doctorate, LLD, MD), country of birth, whether they were born in the same country as their parents, their parents’ country of birth, number of languages they speak other than their native language (1=none, 2=one, 3=two, 4=three or more), number of countries in which they have lived (1=one country, 2=two to three different countries, 3=four to five different countries, 4=over five different countries) and visited (1=none, 2=one country, 3=two to three different countries, 4=four to five different countries, 5=over five different countries), whether they have a close friend from another culture (1=yes, 2=no), whether their best friend is from another culture (1=yes, 2=no), and whether they interact with people from other cultures at work (1=yes, 2=no).

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Thomas, D., Liao, Y., Aycan, Z. et al. Cultural intelligence: A theory-based, short form measure. J Int Bus Stud 46, 1099–1118 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2014.67

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