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The governing form known as democracy translates literally as 'the rule of the people.' It has existed in its earliest form for over 2500 years. In Western countries, it is now generally uncontroversial that democracy is the most advanced and best form of government – this is traditionally celebrated on September 15. ; Die Regierungsform Demokratie bedeutet wörtlich übersetzt 'Herrschaft des Volkes'. Sie besteht in ihrer frühesten Form seit über 2500 Jahren. In den westlichen Ländern ist es mittlerweile größtenteils unumstritten, dass es sich bei der Demokratie um die fortschrittlichste und beste Regierungsform handelt – dies wird traditionell am 15. September gefeiert.

To challenge the commonly made assumption in cross-national survey projects that close translation yields more comparable data than adaptation, we implemented a translation experiment in the CROss-National Online Survey Panel. The English source questionnaire was split into three batches of 20 items each and was translated by three translation teams into Estonian and three teams into Slovene. The teams received specific instructions on how to translate each batch (either closely or adaptively) so that, by design, the teams translated two batches following one approach and one following the other approach. Respondents in the two countries (Estonia and Slovenia) were randomly assigned to three distinct questionnaire versions based on the same source questionnaire, each consisting of translations by all three teams and including close and adaptive translations. We developed an analytical framework to assess the translation potential of the source items (i.e., all theoretically possible translations of a specific item) and the actual translation scores (i.e., the degree of closeness vs. adaptiveness of a specific translation). We show that some items are more sensitive to the wording (small linguistic changes result in a different response behavior) while others are more robust (the meaning of the concept is retained despite linguistic changes).

When we try to understand human behavior or beliefs, we might be tempted to either see these as the outcome of an individual's free choice or as the result of individual characteristics. However, humans have a need for social contact (i.e., to interact with others; Crosier, Webster, and Dillon, 2012). This social component offers a third type of explanation for why people behave in a specific way or why they tend to hold a specific belief. That is that their behavioral decisions and beliefs are linked to how they are connected to others. The core idea of this perspective is that social relations impact our behavior and shape our beliefs and views on life, while at the same time, we might be selective about who we form relationships with. Such a relational perspective might not only be useful to explain individual behavior and beliefs but might also help explain how cooperation and coordination come about between people, organizations, or even nations. Since organizations and nations are made up of individuals, their coordinations can, in essence, be seen as complex aggregations of individual behavior. Hence, a social network analytical perspective might not only help explain individual behavior but also those of organizations and countries. Central to this third type of explanation is the idea of looking at the world like a social network. This easy_social_sciences issue consists of four papers that take up this idea and highlight different research areas from a social network perspective.

Wenn wir versuchen, menschliches Verhalten oder menschliche Überzeugungen zu verstehen, könnten wir entweder versucht sein, diese als das Ergebnis der freien Entscheidung eines Individuums zu betrachten, oder als das Resultat von individuellen Eigenschaften. Jedoch haben Menschen ein Bedürfnis nach sozialem Kontakt (d.h. nach Interaktion mit anderen; Crosier, Webster, & Dillon, 2012). Diese soziale Komponente bietet einen dritten Erklärungsansatz dafür, warum Menschen sich auf eine bestimmte Art und Weise verhalten oder warum sie zu einer bestimmten Überzeugung tendieren. Das heißt, dass ihre verhaltensbezogenen Entscheidungen und Überzeugungen davon abhängen, wie sie mit anderen Menschen in Verbindung stehen. Im Mittelpunkt eines solchen Ansatzes stehen also die sozialen (Netzwerk-)Beziehungen, die Menschen unterhalten. Der zentrale Gedanke dieser Sichtweise ist, dass sich soziale Beziehungen auf unser Verhalten auswirken und unsere Überzeugungen und Ansichten über das Leben prägen, während wir gleichzeitig selektiv entschieden können, mit wem wir Beziehungen eingehen. Eine solche beziehungsorientierte Perspektive könnte nicht nur nützlich sein, um individuelles Verhalten und Überzeugungen zu erklären, sondern auch, um zu erklären, wie Kooperation und Koordination zwischen Menschen, Organisationen oder sogar Nationen zustande kommen. Da Organisationen und Nationen aus Individuen bestehen, können ihre Aktivitäten im Wesentlichen als komplexe Aggregate des individuellen Verhaltens betrachtet werden. Daher kann eine netzwerkanalytische Perspektive nicht nur helfen, das Verhalten von Individuen, sondern auch von Organisationen und Ländern zu erklären. Im Mittelpunkt dieses dritten Erklärungsansatzes steht die Idee, die Welt als soziales Netzwerk zu begreifen. Diese Ausgabe von easy_social_sciences besteht aus vier Beiträgen, die diese Idee aufgreifen und verschiedene Forschungsbereiche aus der Perspektive sozialer Netzwerke beleuchten.

On 10 December is Human Rights Day. This year, the United Nations has given the day the motto "Recover Better – Stand Up for Human Rights." Especially now, we need to tackle the shortcomings revealed by the corona crisis to manage our shared future. ; Am 10. Dezember ist Tag der Menschenrechte. In diesem Jahr haben die Vereinten Nationen dem Tag das Motto "Recover Better – Stand Up for Human Rights" gegeben. Besonders jetzt müssen wir uns mit den durch die Corona-Krise offengelegten Versäumnissen befassen, um unsere gemeinsame Zukunft meistern zu können.

The field of acculturation spans a rich and broad spectrum of relevant topics, types of populations and geographic areas. It has, however, been slow in incorporating theoretical insights beyond the intergroup relations perspective, neglecting contributions from other social psychology areas, such as the socio-cognitive approach, and from disciplines such as cultural and personality psychology, and the social-network perspective. The main aim of this article is to inform and broaden the understanding of micro- and meso-level acculturation mechanisms (e.g., cultural frame switching, multicultural identity structure and dynamics, intra- and inter-personal interculturality). We argue that it is time for acculturation research to apply other methodologies, rely on new theoretical paradigms and move from predicting acculturation outcomes (e.g., psychological well-being) to modelling acculturation processes. The article closes with a discussion on potential future challenges and needed directions in the social psychological study of acculturation, interculturalism and migration.

This article proposes a social network approach to the study of multiple cultural identifications. We argue that social network theory and social network methodology are essential for a truly dynamic examination of how multiple cultural identifications develop and how they are negotiated. This article starts by defining some relevant concepts (i.e., cultural identification, Bicultural Identity Integration, social networks), and then goes on to integrate these concepts into a micro-meso-level framework by discussing the bidirectional links between cultural identifications and social networks (i.e., their content and their structure). We, then, explicate how social and cultural psychology can gain theoretically and methodologically from social network analysis. Finally, we conclude with some recommendations for researchers who seek to include social networks in their approach, and also discuss general and specific policy implications.

This research examines how the social networks of immigrants residing in a European bicultural and bilingual context (Catalonia) relate to levels of adjustment (both psychological and sociocultural) and to bicultural identity integration (BII). Moroccan, Pakistani, Ecuadorian, and Romanian immigrants residing in Barcelona nominated 25 individuals (i.e., alters) from their habitual social networks and provided demographic (e.g., ethnicity), relationship type (e.g., family, friend, neighbor), and structural (who knew whom) information for each of these alters. Even after controlling for individual-level demographic and acculturation variables, the content and structure of immigrants' personal social networks had unique associations with both types of adjustment and with BII. Specifically, the overall degree of cultural diversity in the network and the amount of Catalan (but not Spanish) "weak" ties (i.e., acquaintances, colleagues, neighbors) positively predicted these outcomes. Amount of interconnectedness between local coethnic and Catalan/Spanish alters also predicted sociocultural adjustment and BII positively. Finally, against a "culture and language similarity" hypothesis, Moroccan and Pakistani participants had social networks that were more culturally integrated, relative to Ecuadorians and Romanians. Results from this study attest to the importance of examining actual intercultural relations and going beyond individuals' reported acculturation preferences to understand immigrants' overall adaptation and cultural identity dynamics. Furthermore, results highlight the interplay between interculturalism experienced at the intrapersonal, subjective level (i.e., BII), and at the meso-level (i.e., having culturally diverse networks that also include interethnic ties among alters).

An adequate understanding of the acculturation processes affecting immigrants and their descendants involves ascertaining the dynamic interplay between the way these individuals manage their multiple (and sometimes conflictual) cultural value systems and identifications and possible changes in their social networks. To fill this gap, the present research examines how key acculturation variables (e.g., strength of ethnic/host cultural identifications, bicultural identity integration or BII) relate to the composition and structure of bicultural individuals' personal social networks. In Study 1, we relied on a generationally and culturally diverse community sample of 123 Latinos residing in the US. Participants nominated eight individuals (i.e., alters) from their habitual social networks and across two relational domains: friendships and colleagues. Results indicated that the interconnection of same ethnicity alters across different relationship domains is linked to cultural identifications, while the amount of coethnic and host individuals in the network is not. In particular, higher interconnection between Latino friends and colleagues was linked to lower levels of U.S. identification. Conversely, the interconnection of non-Latino friends and colleagues was associated with lower levels of Latino identification. This pattern of results suggests that the relational context for each type of cultural identification works in a subtractive and inverse manner. Further, time spent in the US was linked to both Latino and U.S. cultural identifications, but this relationship was moderated by the level of BII. Specifically, the association between time in the US and strength of both cultural identities was stronger for individuals reporting low levels of BII. Taking the findings from Study 1 as departure point, Study 2 used an agent-based model data simulation approach to explore the dynamic ways in which the content and the structure of an immigrant's social network might matter over time in predicting three possible identity patterns: coexisting cultural identifications, conflicting cultural identifications, and a mixture of the two. These simulations allowed us to detect network constellations, which lead to identification or disidentification with both cultures. We showed that distinct patterns of social relations do not lead to identity outcomes in a deterministic fashion, but that often many different outcomes are probable.

Diversity in social relations is important for reducing prejudice. Yet, the question of when this occurs remains open. Using a social network approach, we test whether the link between outgroup attitudes and number of intra- and intergroup contacts is moderated by type of relationship (strong vs. weak ties) and personality (openness to experience) while also considering network structure (connections between contacts). In a culturally diverse sample of 122 immigrants residing in Barcelona, positive outgroup attitudes were predicted by several network characteristics: low proportion of intragroup contacts and high proportion of intergroup contacts among strong ties, high ethnic diversity among strong ties, low connectedness among contacts in the country of origin, and high connectedness between coethnic local and host national contacts. Openness to experience moderated these effects. These results affirm the intergroup benefits of having compositionally and structurally diverse networks, and the gain in examining intergroup dynamics at the meso level of analysis.

Ikizer and Ramirez-Esparza (2017) reported a study suggesting that bilingualism may have a positive impact on people's social skills. They found that a) bilinguals scored higher on a scale that is supposed to reveal social flexibility, and that b) they also report having social interactions more frequently than monolinguals. The authors relate this advantage in social flexibility to the need of exercising language switching in bilingual speakers. In this commentary, we argue that their arguments are not theoretically sound and that their observations are not compelling enough to reach this conclusion.

Due to the growing significance of international studies, the need for tools to assess the equivalence of items is pressing. Web probing, which is implementing verbal probing techniques traditionally used in cognitive interviewing in online surveys, is a method to complement quantitative techniques to establish equivalence of items in crosscultural research. We illustrate this approach by assessing the question of 'how important it is that government authorities respect and protect the rights of minorities', which was originally used in the International Social Survey Program, for respondents in five countries (Germany, Britain, the U.S., Mexico, and Spain). First, participants answered this question using a 7-point Likert scale. Then they wrote freely what types of minorities they had thought of. Whether country differences in the response patterns can be interpreted substantially depends partially on how similarly the term 'minorities' is understood across these five contexts. Our results show that people in the participating countries have slightly different kinds of 'minorities' in mind.

Due to the growing significance of international studies, the need for tools to assess the equivalence of items is pressing. Web probing, which is implementing verbal probing techniques traditionally used in cognitive interviewing in online surveys, is a method to complement quantitative techniques to establish equivalence of items in crosscultural research. We illustrate this approach by assessing the question of 'how important it is that government authorities respect and protect the rights of minorities', which was originally used in the International Social Survey Program, for respondents in five countries (Germany, Britain, the U.S., Mexico, and Spain). First, participants answered this question using a 7-point Likert scale. Then they wrote freely what types of minorities they had thought of. Whether country differences in the response patterns can be interpreted substantially depends partially on how similarly the term 'minorities' is understood across these five contexts. Our results show that people in the participating countries have slightly different kinds of 'minorities' in mind.

Due to the growing significance of international studies, the need for tools to assess the equivalence of items is pressing. Web probing, which is implementing verbal probing techniques traditionally used in cognitive interviewing in online surveys, is a method to complement quantitative techniques to establish equivalence of items in crosscultural research. We illustrate this approach by assessing the question of 'how important it is that government authorities respect and protect the rights of minorities', which was originally used in the International Social Survey Program, for respondents in five countries (Germany, Britain, the U.S., Mexico, and Spain). First, participants answered this question using a 7-point Likert scale. Then they wrote freely what types of minorities they had thought of. Whether country differences in the response patterns can be interpreted substantially depends partially on how similarly the term 'minorities' is understood across these five contexts. Our results show that people in the participating countries have slightly different
kinds of 'minorities' in mind.

The ability to draw valid conclusions from data is crucial for any empirical research. Thus, validity is one of the leading quality criteria in the social and behavioral sciences. However, the term validity is used very differently across disciplines and time, creating terminological confusion that can render the concept elusive. This survey guideline provides a compact overview of different meanings associated with the term validity in the social and behavioral sciences. To acknowledge the term's full breadth, we first distinguish between (a) validity pertaining to the research design and (b) validity pertaining to measurement instruments. We show that validity is fundamentally about whether the research design and measurement instruments used for a study are true to what they are theoretically supposed to represent or capture. Subsequently, we focus on providing practical guidance on assessing measurement validity, that is, a measurement instrument's ability to measure what it purports to measure. In particular, we discuss the types of evidence supporting measurement validity and the methods researchers can use to provide such evidence for survey research. Our aim is to equip researchers with a conceptual understanding of measurement validity and a toolkit for assessing the validity of measurement instruments. We emphasize that validity is not a fixed property of a measurement instrument. Instead, researchers should view validity as a dynamic process of validation. This ongoing practice involves supporting and justifying conclusions drawn from survey data through a combination of theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence.