1. An Application of Cultural Consensus Analysis
Cultural Consonance
An Application of Cultural Consensus Analysis

2. Typical definitions of culture describe culture as an aggregate.
But culture is a property of both the aggregate and the individual. We can use cultural consensus models to establish a link between the aggregate and individual levels.
Cultural consonance relates to “the individual in cultural context”.

3. Knowledge & behavior
Take Goodenough’s definition of culture (what one has to know in order to function adequately) as a member of society and Bourdieu’s emphasis on practice.
Cultural consonance integrates these perfectives: the extent to which people act on the cultural knowledge / cultural models they have learned as a member of society and that they share with others.

4. Knowledge & behavior
There’s no one-to-one correspondence between what one knows and what one does. The gap can be due to:
Conscious reflection
External constraints
The work on cultural consonance by Dressler and colleagues focuses on this dimension and the implications for health.

5. Cultural consonance defined
The degree to which individuals in their own behaviors approximate the prototypical behaviors encoded in a cultural model.
Dressler, W. et al. (2005) Measuring Cultural Consonance: Examples with Special Reference to Measurement Theory in Anthropology

6. Cultural consonance explains some variance in health
Higher cultural consonance in two different domains (lifestyle and social support) associated with:
lower arterial blood pressure
lower perceived stress
fewer symptoms of depression
Dresser, W. and dos Santos (2000) Social and cultural dimensions of hypertension in Brazil: A review. Cadernos de Saúde Pública 16:303–15.

7. Steps for Cultural Consonance Analysis:
Identify domain(s)
Free lists
Reduce the list to a small list of items
Pile sorts
Investigate features/ dimensions in pile sort data
For example, value /importance emerged as one dimension
Dressler, W., et al. (2005) Measuring
Cultural Consonance: Examples with
Special Reference to Measurement in
Anthropology, Field Methods, 17(4):

8. Steps for Cultural Consonance Analysis:
Have respondents rank-order selected items according to their importance.
Conduct cultural consensus analysis
Use results of CCA to design cultural consonance survey questions about behaviors and values
Assess match between reported behavior and consensus results (e.g. consensus ratings)
Correlate consonance scores with dependent variable.
Dressler, W., et al. (2005) Measuring
Cultural Consonance: Examples with
Special Reference to Measurement in
Anthropology, Field Methods, 17(4):

9. Identifying Domain
Dressler and colleagues’ studies in Brazil focus on social status and social integration, and their relationship to health (psychosocial stress, blood pressure).
They selected domains related to individual adaptation, which they identified through ethnographic research and theoretical considerations:
Lifestyle: material goods and related behaviors
Social support: help with problems

10. Free lists Lifestyle had two sub-domains
Material goods: “list material goods or possessions that people need to live a good life”.
Leisure activities: “list activities that people typically engage in in their free time”.
Social support had two sub-domains
Problems for which people typically seek the help from others
Kinds of people to whom one might turn for help

11. Pile sorts & Exploring Dimensions
Unconstrained pile sorts
Respondents grouped items on the basis of similarity
Aggregate proximity matrices of the pile sort data were analyzed using MDS
Material possessions: necessities versus superficial. A single dimension of “need” was identified.
Leisure activities: two dimensions identified
Personal development
Social interaction

12. Ratings - Rankings
To examine cultural consensus respondents were asked to evaluate a combined list of items (both material and leisure), in terms of what was generally thought to be important in the community.
Four-point scale: “not at all important” to “very important”.

13. Cultural Consensus Main findings:
High consensus: ratio of the first-to-second eigenvalue = 6.59, mean competence = .71 ± .12
Analysis of intracultural variation found significant differences between education groups
More well-educated respondents were less convinced about the importance of the material and leisure items than less- educated respondents.
Material goods and leisure were thought of as one coherent domain of lifestyle.

14. Design of Cultural Consonance Survey
Survey instruments were designed to measure cultural consonance in the selected domains:
Lifestyle:
from a list of material goods, indicate which owned.
From a list of leisure activities, rate frequency of doing each of the activities
Social support:
Rank order top 3-4 sources of support

15. Calculate cultural consonance
Two ways to calculate cultural consonance in lifestyle:
Use the combined list of items from rating-ranking task and weight each item by the consensus rating from the answer key in the CCA.
Use only the items rated most important in the cultural consensus model and do a simple count of that in people’s responses.

16. Final Step: Correlate consonance scores with DV