The Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS) consists of 186 anthropologically described societies chosen by the sample’s creators, Murdock and White (1969). The sample tried to minimize cultural relatedness, so only one society was chosen from a given culture area. Each society is pinpointed in time and space. Researchers coding variables for this sample are expected to adhere to the specified time and place focus.

To facilitate research for those wanting to code their own variables using eHRAF World Cultures for the SCCS sample, the HRAF staff have flagged those documents that, in HRAF’s judgment, provide an appropriate match to the time and place foci of the SCCS. Note that in almost all cases, eHRAF World Cultures contains many more documents than those flagged. This is because the HRAF collections try to cover multiple times and places to facilitate understanding of change of over and of regional variation.

We have indicated matches in multiple ways. First, we have provided information in the table below. Clicking on the ethnographer name and date will bring up the publication information page for the document (authentication required). Second, in the eHRAF World Cultures database itself, you can, after performing a search, narrow your results to the societies in eHRAF that have some matching documents. When you open the first results page, the documents that match are footnoted with “S1,” “S2,” and “S3.” As explained in the footnotes, an “S1” is considered a direct match. An “S2” is considered a partial match, usually because the document covers multiple time periods or multiple cultures. An “S3” footnote is occasionally given when the time or place is somewhat ambiguous and we urge some caution in using the source.

Cultural Concordance

All cultures change over time and except for the smallest of societies, most have regional variability. Different cross-cultural samples sometimes have different time and place foci for the same culture. This presents a problem if cross-cultural researchers using eHRAF want to use some variables coded by others when testing their hypotheses. The most common way of matching across cultural samples is to look for common names.

However, matching culture names is problematic for two reasons. First, the names are not always the same in two different samples. Second, even if the same name is found, the data from the two samples may not match because the information is from a different time and/or a different place. Using information for different time and place foci is likely to increase random error, which will almost always reduce correlations.

To solve these problems for researchers, the following table provides “matches” between eHRAF and SCCS as assessed by HRAF. A “match” between two samples means that they share the same time and place focus for the same culture. Note that in contrast to other cross-cultural samples, eHRAF usually contains more than one time and place focus to give researchers the opportunity to study change over time as well as cultural variation within the society.

Table: SCCS matches in eHRAF

References

Ember, Carol R. 2007. “Using the HRAF Collection of Ethnography in Conjunction With the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample and the Ethnographic Atlas”. Cross-Cultural Research 41:  396-427.

Murdock, George Peter and Douglas R. White. 1969. “Standard Cross-Cultural Sample.” Ethnology. 9:329-369.