This small “could-be-research”-project deals with the following question: “Does culture/nationality mean nationality/culture?”
Assuming this research would be done, how could it be like?
Our research should be based on collected data. A survey could be made in 20 different European countries with a few questions which contain invisibly (only obvious for us, to enhance the relyablitiy and the validity of the research project because if a participant knows what his answers contribute to the result of the research he may do not answer correctly/honestly and these answers would be barely useful) the needed answers to our main topic. Questions may be like: which country’s language is in your opinion the most beautiful?, Would you say your country’s variety of food reflects the size of your culture’s horizon? (Only to mention some examples, how it could be like..)
Further on our method could be the following: The answers to these questions are done voluntarily and the channel we are getting the information from is the media which is going to pose these questions through TV in order to reach the average person and a representative amount of people. Hence we do not set a special target in the population of the countries.
The questions should be really easy to understand because every person has to understand them right away.
Accordingly for the same reason the method to give the answers must be easy as well. That means maybe that the there should be established a special questionnaire like multiple choice and no written answers because people do not have or do not want to invest too much time for that kind of surveys. Of course this depends also on the title of the questionnaire. Hence: Interesting title means more time investement, not interesting mean less time investement.
Then the next step would be to ask them to send a free sms to a certain given number on TV. After that we collect the data and put it into a computer which makes the evaluation and partly helps also the interpretation. But the main part of the interpretation should be done by an analyzing person or team.
Concerning the title we could chose the following: ”How multifaceted is your nation’s culture and what do you contribute to your culture?” This includes the person’s personality and he feels that his opinion is needed. He will probably tend to answer the questions weather he likes his country or he likes to declare his own view on things (main drivers: curiosity and egoism?) And though possibly lots of people would be interested in taking part in that.
The aim of this research is to see how big the mass is which compare or equalize culture with his nation. The results would also help us to analyze and understand the integration of immigrants and hence the opinion of the natives. Because we maybe can answer questions like the following after having gotten the results. “If an immigrant lives for half of his life time in a country and adopts its culture completely, would it then mean, that he also belongs to the nation (-ality) in the eyes of the “real”/ native population. These information from 20 countries of Europe could help in order to compare the countries and their understanding of culture, nation and nationality/immigrants which gave us at least a significant hint to the tendency for our main question: “Does culture/nationality mean nationality/culture?”
Application areas:
-The results could also be used maybe in policy to improve the situation in the country concerning the circumstances for instance between “foreigners” and “natives”.
-The result could also help people to understand where they belong to and in a wider sense who they actually are.
Or you might also associate some application areas. Or do you have other statements and questions? Let us know!