The Problem of Metaphorical Nonequivalence in Cross-Cultural Survey Research: Comparing the Mental Health Statuses of Hmong Refugee and General Population Adolescents

The use of questionnaire data to compare the mental health of Hmong refugee and general population high school students demonstrates the difficulty of translating between investigator and subject lexicons and, consequently, of equating the conceptual systems they signify. Whether particular psychoso...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of cross-cultural psychology 1993-09, Vol.24 (3), p.344-365
Main Authors: Dunnigan, Timothy, McNall, Miles, Mortimer, Jeylan T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acculturation
Adolescents
Asian Americans
Biological and medical sciences
Comparative Analysis
Cross Cultural Studies
Crosscultural Analysis
Cultural Differences
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Grade 9
High School Students
High Schools
Hmong People
Language
Laotians
Mental Health
Mental Illness
Metaphors
Methodology (Data Collection)
Methodology. Experimentation
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychometrics. Statistics. Methodology
Refugees
Research Design
Research Problems
Social research
Southeast Asian Cultural Groups
Survey Research
Surveys
Testing Problems
Translations
Urban Youth
Well Being
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Summary:The use of questionnaire data to compare the mental health of Hmong refugee and general population high school students demonstrates the difficulty of translating between investigator and subject lexicons and, consequently, of equating the conceptual systems they signify. Whether particular psychosocial variables that are standardized for a general population can be used to study the adjustment of linguistically unassimilated ethnic minorities depends on the nature of the semantic discontinuities that exist between the source and target languages. Metaphorical nonequivalence significantly affected the responses of a subset of Hmong subjects to English survey items.
ISSN:0022-0221
1552-5422
DOI:10.1177/0022022193243005