As the name itself suggests, cross cultural research implies collection and analysis of data from more than one nation. A few possible models to conduct cross cultural research are:
- A researcher has to associate himself with another research team to collect data in other countries. Hofstede conducted a research on differences in culture between employees of IBM in various countries. He worked on representation of similar gender and age.
- There is a central organisation that coordinates the work of national organisations or different groups.
- Data that is comparable is used for secondary analysis but only where their coordination of collection is restrained and not existing. This kind of analysis happens if researchers ask survey questions in their own country similar to what have been questioned in other countries. The outcome from this data is analysed cross culturally. There is further form of this model, collection and analysis could be done from secondary analysis of officially collected data like unemployment statistics. But this kind of model has to be particular about accuracy of data, which is likely to be produced by different agencies thus providing a suitable base for comparison.
- The different teams that work on research is recruited by a person or a body that coordinates the complete programme. Every researcher conducts research in his own country. Coordination is important to make sure the comparability of research and survey questions and tools and techniques administered to conduct the research.