Cross-validation of cultural tightness and looseness measures

Abstract

The goal of the present study was to cross-validate two measures of cultural tightness and looseness, CTL: one used in a comparison within the United States, and the other used in a cross-country comparison. The former was based mainly on aggregation of state laws on controversial issues and religiosity and the latter on assessment of homogeneity in moral values among representative samples across countries. To cross-validate these two measures, both were recomputed at the US divisional level. Despite the differences in their methods of computation, the two measures of CTL correlated highly with each other, r=.92, and with theoretical variables of interest. Further, when the two measures of CTL were used simultaneously to predict theoretical variables of interest, neither remained significant suggesting that they were substitutable with each other. Convergence of results with measures computed via maximally different methods increases the confidence in the validity of these two CTL measures.