Abstract:

Cultural intelligence (CQ) has been defined as ‘‘a person’s capability to adapt effectively to new cultural contexts’’ (Earley and Ang, 2003). The authors argued that CQ offered a conceptual advancement in the study of cross-cultural transition and adaptation and lent itself to a range of applications, including training and selection for overseas assignments. CQ has subsequently attracted interest and critical commentary from international scholars in social, cross-cultural, and organizational psychology (Konrad, 2006); however, to date there have been few empirical investigations of the emerging construct.

The purpose of this study is to adapt ‘Cultural Intelligence Survey’, originally developed by Ang, Van Dyne, Koh and Ng (2004), into Turkish Culture. Earley and Ang (2003) proposed that CQ has four dimensions: Cognitive, Metacognitive, Motivational, and Behavioral. This structure has been confirmed with domestic student samples in Singapore and the United States (Ang et al., 2004); however, it has not been tested in a different sample from different cultures. Therefore, I am interested in confirming the four-factor structure with a sample of academics actively engaged in the process of cross-cultural adaptation.

A total of 212 academics, working in various universities in Turkey in 2013, participated in the study. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was applied to test the construct validity of the scale. Cronbach’s Alpha and item-total correlations were also calculated to determine the reliability of the scale.
The study supported the proposed four-factor (Cognitive, Meta-cognitive, Motivational, and Behavioral) structure of CQ. Results indicated that the study produced a valid and reliable scale with 20 items under 4 subscale as developed in original form. To my knowledge, this is the first report producing a valid and reliable scale for measuring ‘Cultural Intelligence’ in Turkish Culture. In this regard, the scale adapted into Turkish in the present study is expected to contribute well to the related literature.

Keywords:

Cultural intelligence, validity, confirmatory factor anaysis.