 Cultural consensus theory assumes that cultural beliefs are learned and shared across people  . Since the amount of information in a culture is too large for any one individual to master, individuals know different subsets of the cultural knowledge and vary in their cultural competence. Cultural beliefs are beliefs held by a majority of culture members. Given a set of questions, on the same topic, shared cultural beliefs or norms regarding the answers can be estimated by aggregating the responses across a sample of culture members. When agreement is close to absolute, estimating answers is straightforward. The problem addressed by cultural consensus theory is how to estimate beliefs when there is some degree of heterogeneity present in responses. In general, cultural consensus theory provides a framework for determining whether responses are sufficiently homogeneous to estimate a single set of shared answers, and then estimating the answers and individual cultural competence in answering the questions. Usage To use cultural consensus theory, at least three assumptions must be met: Informants must be asked a series of questions. The questions should all be on the same topic and at the same level of difficulty. This assumption concerns the homogeneity of items and means that items should represent only one topic or domain of knowledge and that competency should be consistent across items, so that if someone does well on one subset of questions, they should also do well on another subset of questions. Responses to questions are not corrected, recoded, transformed, or reflected as they are with knowledge tests and attitudinal scales because the purpose is to use the original responses to estimate culturally correct answers. Each informant should provide answers independently of all other informants. This means that answers should be provided by individuals and not groups, and without consultation with others. Consensus models are not appropriate for group interviews. The cultural consensus model is applicable only if there is a single set of answers to the questions. This means that there must be a high level of consistency (agreement) in responses among informants  . An aggregation of responses is not a valid estimate unless there is reasonable consistency in the underlying data. An initial step in applying consensus theory is to check whether there is a high degree of agreement among the informants (e.g., to verify that there is only one response pattern present). Models of the theory Cultural consensus theory encompasses formal and informal models.  The formal cultural consensus model models the decision-making process for answering questions.Romney AK, Weller SC., Batchelder WH. Culture as consensus: A theory of culture and informant accuracy. Am Anthro. 1986;88(2):313–38.Batchelder WH, Romney AK. Test theory without an answer key. Psychometrika. 1988;53(1):71–92. This version is limited to categorical-type responses: multiple-choice type questions (including those with dichotomous true/false or yes/no responses) and responses to open-ended questions (with a single word or short phrase response for each question). This version of the model has a series of additional assumptions that must be met, i.e., no response bias.Weller, SC and Mann NC. Assessing rater performance without a “gold standard” using consensus theory. Medical Decision Making 1997; 17:71–79. The formal model has direct parallels in signal detection theory and latent class analysis. An informal version of the model is available as a set of analytic procedures and obtains similar information with fewer assumptions.Romney AK, Batchelder WH, Weller SC. Recent applications of cultural consensus theory. Am Behavioral Scientist. 1987; 31:163–177. The informal model parallels a factor analysis on people (without rotation) and thus has similarities to Q factor analysis (as in Q Methodology). The informal version of the model can accommodate interval estimates and ranked response data. Both approaches provide estimates of the culturally correct answers and estimates of individual differences in the accuracy of reported information.  Competence Cultural competence is estimated from the similarity in responses between pairs of subjects since the agreement between a pair of respondents is a function of their individual competencies. In the formal model, similarity is the probability that matched responses occur (match method. or the probability of particular response combinations occur (covariance method). Simple match or covariance measures are then corrected for guessing and the proportion of positive responses, respectively. In the informal model, similarity is calculated with a Pearson correlation coefficient. Analysis  Cultural Consensus analyses may be performed with software applications. The formal consensus model is currently only available in the software packages ANTHROPAC or UCINET. Analysis procedures for the informal model are available in most statistical packages. The informal model can be run within a factor analysis procedure, requesting the minimum-residual (principal axis factoring) algorithm method that solves for the missing diagonal without rotation. However, when factor analysis is used for consensus applications, ~~the data must be transposed, so that questions are the unit of analysis (the rows in a data matrix) and people are the variables~~ (the columns in the data matrix).
Theory Cultural consensus theory assumes that cultural beliefs are learned and shared across people and that there is a common understanding of what the world and society are all about . Since the amount of information in a culture is too large for any one individual to master, individuals know different subsets of the cultural knowledge and vary in their cultural competence. Cultural beliefs are beliefs held by a majority of culture members. Given a set of questions, on the same topic, shared cultural beliefs or norms regarding the answers can be estimated by aggregating the responses across a sample of culture members. When agreement is close to absolute, estimating answers is straightforward. The problem addressed by cultural consensus theory is how to estimate beliefs when there is some degree of heterogeneity present in responses. In general, cultural consensus theory provides a framework for determining whether responses are sufficiently homogeneous to estimate a single set of shared answers, and then estimating the answers and individual cultural competence in answering the questions. Usage To use cultural consensus theory, at least three assumptions must be met: Informants must be asked a series of questions. The questions should all be on the same topic and at the same level of difficulty. This assumption concerns the homogeneity of items and means that items should represent only one topic or domain of knowledge and that competency should be consistent across items, so that if someone does well on one subset of questions, they should also do well on another subset of questions. Responses to questions are not corrected, recoded, transformed, or reflected as they are with knowledge tests and attitudinal scales because the purpose is to use the original responses to estimate culturally correct answers. Each informant should provide answers independently of all other informants. This means that answers should be provided by individuals and not groups, and without consultation with others. Consensus models are not appropriate for group interviews. The cultural consensus model is applicable only if there is a single set of answers to the questions. This means that there must be a high level of consistency (agreement) in responses among informants , which some refer to as common truth . An aggregation of responses is not a valid estimate unless there is reasonable consistency in the underlying data. An initial step in applying consensus theory is to check whether there is a high degree of agreement among the informants (e.g., to verify that there is only one response pattern present). Models of the theory Cultural consensus theory encompasses formal and informal models. Practically speaking, these models are often used to estimate cultural beliefs, including the degree to which individuals report such beliefs. The formal cultural consensus model models the decision-making process for answering questions.Romney AK, Weller SC., Batchelder WH. Culture as consensus: A theory of culture and informant accuracy. Am Anthro. 1986;88(2):313–38.Batchelder WH, Romney AK. Test theory without an answer key. Psychometrika. 1988;53(1):71–92. This version is limited to categorical-type responses: multiple-choice type questions (including those with dichotomous true/false or yes/no responses) and responses to open-ended questions (with a single word or short phrase response for each question). This version of the model has a series of additional assumptions that must be met, i.e., no response bias.Weller, SC and Mann NC. Assessing rater performance without a “gold standard” using consensus theory. Medical Decision Making 1997; 17:71–79. The formal model has direct parallels in signal detection theory and latent class analysis. An informal version of the model is available as a set of analytic procedures and obtains similar information with fewer assumptions.Romney AK, Batchelder WH, Weller SC. Recent applications of cultural consensus theory. Am Behavioral Scientist. 1987; 31:163–177. The informal model parallels a factor analysis on people (without rotation) and thus has similarities to Q factor analysis (as in Q Methodology). The informal version of the model can accommodate interval estimates and ranked response data. Both approaches provide estimates of the culturally correct answers and estimates of individual differences in the accuracy of reported information. One specific method of the formal version used in the analysis of data is the mathematical model, which is a set of logical axioms as well as derived propositions and assumptions that explain how empirical variables fit in the model's parameters. The informal model, on the other hand, uses reliability analysis. Competence Cultural competence is estimated from the similarity in responses between pairs of subjects since the agreement between a pair of respondents is a function of their individual competencies. In the formal model, similarity is the probability that matched responses occur (match method. or the probability of particular response combinations occur (covariance method). Simple match or covariance measures are then corrected for guessing and the proportion of positive responses, respectively. In the informal model, similarity is calculated with a Pearson correlation coefficient. Analysis When used as a method for analysis, the cultural consensus theory allows the following: the determination whether the observed variability in knowledge is cultural; the measurement of cultural competence that each individual possesses; and, the determination of culturally correct knowledge. Cultural Consensus analyses may be performed with software applications. The formal consensus model is currently only available in the software packages ANTHROPAC or UCINET. Analysis procedures for the informal model are available in most statistical packages. The informal model can be run within a factor analysis procedure, requesting the minimum-residual (principal axis factoring) algorithm method that solves for the missing diagonal without rotation. However, when factor analysis is used for consensus applications, ~~the data must be transposed, so that questions are the unit of analysis (the rows in a data matrix) and people are the variables~~ (the columns in the data matrix).
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Theory
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and that there is a common understanding of what the world and society are all about
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, which some refer to as common truth
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Practically speaking, these models are often used to estimate cultural beliefs, including the degree to which individuals report such beliefs.
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One specific method of the formal version used in the analysis of data is the mathematical model, which is a set of logical axioms as well as derived propositions and assumptions that explain how empirical variables fit in the model's parameters. The informal model, on the other hand, uses reliability analysis.
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When used as a method for analysis, the cultural consensus theory allows the following: the determination whether the observed variability in knowledge is cultural; the measurement of cultural competence that each individual possesses; and, the determination of culturally correct knowledge.