"The Survey of the national character of the Japanese" has been conducted by the Institute of Statistical Mathematics since 1953, and has been widened to international comparative surveys in many countries, including the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Brazil. The same surveys using the same questionnaire have been carried out over time in Japan and in many other countries. Through analysis of these survey results, the similarities and dissimilarities between the national character of countries and the relation between national character and culture have been revealed.
The survey of the Japanese national character has been conducted every five years since 1953 using the same questionnaire, for the purpose of clarifying changes in the Japanese way of thinking.
Through this survey, various interesting discoveries have been made. However, the primary purpose of this survey is not only for the statistical study of the Japanese national character, but also the development of new statistical methods.
We cannot simply compare the survey data obtained in various countries because of problems in differences of sampling method and translation. We have developed a method called Cultural Link Analysis(CLA) to make the international comparison of survey data possible.
This is a method to place individual countries in the totality by successively connecting countries nearer in terms of language and ethnic characteristics.
The questionnaire is carefully translated into each language by repeating back translation instead of simple word-for-word translation.
In this way, the results obtained from the survey become increasingly effective.