Cultural Manifold Analysis (CULMAN) for Cross-National Comparative Survey

The objective of this presentation is to show our paradigm called Cultural Manifold Analysis (CULMAN) for the comparability of cross-national surveys.  This paradigm has been developed in the longitudinal and cross-national surveys on national character by the Institute of Statistical Mathematics (ISM) over the past six decades since 1953.  First, I summarize our paradigm of cross-national and longitudinal surveys.   Second, I summarize some Japanese social values and, among others, aspects of people’s sense of interpersonal trust shown in our longitudinal survey of Japanese national character. (See http://www.ism.ac.jp/ism_info_e/kokuminsei_e.html )

Thirdly, I present cross-national comparisons of interpersonal and institutional trust as well as some basic social values based on our past surveys, including the Seven Country Survey (surveys of seven-countries (Japan, USA and five European countries)), the East Asia Values Survey (EAVS) (2002-2005), the Pacific-Rim Values Survey (PRVS) (2004-2008) and the Asia-Pacific Values Survey (APVS) (2010-2014). (See http://www.jsps.go.jp/j-grantsinaid/12_kiban/ichiran_22/e-data/e33_yoshino.pdf) The results show that East Asian countries have already departed from traditional Confucianism and that people share more common social values beyond the distinction of East and West.  Fourthly, I present an overview of data on Japanese immigrants in Brazil, Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast in order to study the interaction between the environment and ethnicity.   Finally, some comments are provided for our future research.