Half a century of measuring culture: Review of approaches, challenges, and limitations based on the analysis of 121 instruments for quantifying culture

After examining 121 instruments for measuring culture, we provide a historical overview and analyze how culture has been operationalized over the last half a century. Our study focuses on the topics of culture definition, dimensionality of culture models, collection and analysis of data for measuring culture, levels of culture measurement, issues of cross-cultural survey equivalence and the reliability and validity of culture measures. For each of these topics, we provide a review of existing approaches, discuss the challenges, and suggest best practices. Based on our analysis, we identify gaps in the field of culture measurement and offer directions for future research.