A literature review on Singapore's individualism and collectivism research

• Main Authors: Lim, Madeline Wei Zhen, Lim, Mei Zhen
• Other Authors: Kenichi Ito
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Sociology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/63285
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The aim of this paper is to review how Individualism and Collectivism (IND COL) has been studied in Singapore. Hence, this review includes 36 IND COL research papers that included Singaporeans as samples. Drawing from Oyserman (2002)’s meta-analysis and other important publications in the past decades, we identified the issues that may be controversial for how IND COL had been studied in Singapore. These controversies are reflected as problems that we discuss further in our paper. They are broadly categorised into themes: (1) conceptualisation of IND COL, (2) measurement IND COL and (3) other limitations related to the study/ research method when IND COL is used to explain cultural differences. Based on our literature review, we found that previous IND COL studies done on Singapore have most of the limitations we discussed in our review. Therefore, we hope to draw attention to the currents problems and raise potential future directions in order to lead to improvements in how IND COL will be studied in the future.