Methodological issues in cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research on sustainable development

摘要

One of the perspectives is to understand and place sustainable development within broader picture of globalization and paradigm shift. As long as we 'neatly' divide education, sustainable development and politics we can discuss them as separate 'fields' of work. Globalization is associated with processes, such as internationalization, international relationships, unification and diversity, local and global and similar. It 'occurs' in all areas of social life and from some points of view in all scientific disciplines. The purpose of this article is to present methodological issues related to interdisciplinary and cross-cultural research and sustainable development. We can observe cross-cultural research in management, education, and in other disciplines of social sciences. Cross-cultural research, however, requires translation. If research is understood as a form of communication then cultural dimension play role in data collection stage as well as in other stages of research design. When questionnaires, tests and other instruments of data collection are used in different cultural and linguistic groups a question of equivalence becomes essential. Our consideration is that questionnaires like ours are subjected to double translations: from one field or discipline to other and from one language to other. In these double translations cultural equivalence basically cannot be ensured. Qualitative studies, however, can embrace cultural dimension.