HRAF Advanced Cross-Cultural Research Course

From 2021-2023, the National Science Foundation (NSF), in a grant to the Human Relations Area Files (BCS #2020156), supported three years of Summer Institutes at Yale University. This award enabled the training and professional development of scientists in anthropological science by supporting the Summer Institutes for Cross-Cultural Anthropological Research. These institutes trained faculty, researchers, and advanced graduate students in the theory and state-of-the art methods for conducting regional and worldwide comparative research. An additional aim has been to encourage that these methods be incorporated into courses and cross-cultural research using anthropological data.

The HRAF Advanced Cross-Cultural Research Course is an open access resource offered to disseminate the materials covered in the Summer Institutes to a wider audience. You are welcome to follow along with this course and/or adapt these materials for teaching cross-cultural methods to a class.

Note that this is an advanced course. Those new to cross-cultural research methods may wish to begin with HRAF’s additional online course, Introducing Cross-Cultural Research. Although not required, we recommend also reading chapters specified in the videos that can be found in Cross-Cultural Research Methods, 2nd edition by Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember (2009).

Contact Information

For bugs or technical support, please email: hraf-support@yale.edu. For questions about the course contents, contact Carol R. Ember: carol.ember@yale.edu