In pursuit of quality: Issues for cross-national survey research

The paper discusses quality monitoring and assessment in quantitative survey research from a cross-national perspective. It takes standards of best practice advocated in national survey research as a starting point from which to discuss cross-national research quality and comparability. It illustrates how the lack of adequate documentation at each stage of crossnational research seriously hampers monitoring and evaluation of project quality and comparability across countries. It outlines different kinds of information needed to begin to monitor and evaluate quality properly in cross-national survey research and points towards developments in cross-cultural survey methods which can follow on from such information becoming publicly available.