Scenarios for the Measurement of Collectivism and Individualism

This article presents a method that uses scenarios for the measurement of horizontal (H)and vertical (V) individualism (I) and collectivism (C) across cultures, with university samples. The scenarios were developed by using focus groups, to cover a wide range of social situations often found among university students. Graduate student judges indicated which responses to each scenario represented HI, VI, HC, or VC judgments. When the judges did not agree on these judgments, the scenarios were eliminated. Scenarios that did not distinguish responses obtained from the Illinois and Hong Kong samples were also eliminated. This resulted in a set of 16 scenarios that provide efficient measurement of the constructs. The method converges with a method that uses attitude items.