Culture and social distance: A case study of methodological cautions

The authors presented, as a case study of methodological challenges in cros s-cultural research, E. S. Bogardus's (1925) Social Distance Scale, which r equires respondents to indicate the social distance between themselves and others. The meaningfulness of the scale depends on the assumption that resp ondents believe that the magnitude of social distance increases as one move s through the social categories of family member, friend. neighbor, coworke r, and citizen. The authors tested this assumption for English Canadian, Fr ench Canadian, Jewish, Indian, Algerian, and Creek participants, all Ist-ge neration immigrants in Montreal. The participants rated their willingness t o associate with members of each of the other ethnic groups in 5 social cat egories. The percentage of respondents in each sample whose data conformed to the prediction ranged from 63.7% to 98.0%, with English Canadian, French Canadian, and Jewish respondents providing responses most consistent with the predicted pattern. The Indian and Algerian respondents' data were the l east consistent with the predicted pattern, especially when rating members of their own ethnic groups.