comparative value priorities of chinese and new zealand

Human Resources Department for hotels in China, where I implemented an employee
satisfaction survey for all staff in 1996, using a 5-point Likert-scale technique for data
collection. This survey was repeated in 1997 using a forced-choice “agree-disagree”
technique with similar outcomes as to preferences. Also in 1997, the hotel chain
implemented an employee satisfaction survey produced by a professional surveyresearch
firm, using Likert-type responses. Described in previous studies (Littrell,
2002a, 2002b, and 2003) LBDQXII questionnaires were again administered in 2002 to
the staff of these hotels in China, with subjects demonstrating understanding of the
process and the intent of the surveys using the Likert technique. Using the LBDQXII
the results indicated reliable and valid responses from the subjects (Littrell, 2003).
Error or Data?
Baumgartner and Steenkamp (2001) provide evidence of response bias as a source of
contamination in questionnaire ratings, noting that they threaten the validity of
conclusions drawn from marketing research data. They investigated five forms of
stylistic responding: acquiescence and dis-acquiescence response styles, extreme
response style/response range, midpoint responding, and non-contingent responding.
Using data from large, representative samples of consumers from eleven countries of
the European Union, they found systematic effects of response styles on scale scores as
a function of two scale characteristics, the proportion of reverse-scored items and the
extent of deviation of the scale mean from the midpoint of the response scale. The
correlations between scales can be biased upward or downward depending on the
correlation between the response style components.
Systematic errors in response bias in research are errors introduced into a measurement
by some factor that has persistent directional effects on the characteristic being
measured, or the process of measurement (Patel, Harrison and McKinnon, 2002). Smith
(2004a) points out that since initial studies of response sets or response bias, many
cross-cultural researchers have approached culture-specific response style as a source of
error in the making of cross-cultural comparisons and that ways must thus be found to
discount it (e.g., Leung and Bond, 1989; Harzing, 2006). Hofstede (1980) used withinsubject
standardization averaging the agreements that each respondent records within
the full range of items. Deviation scores such as these are sometimes standardised by
dividing by the standard deviation (subject-based z-scores). Smith (2004a) points out
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