Reconceptualizing Arab Media Research: Moving From Centrism Toward Inclusiveness and Balance

Historical Roots

Although much has happened in the Middle East and North Africa in the last three decades to put the region on the world map and, perhaps, falsely signal its countries’ long histories as independent and sovereign, the fact is that a significant number of the countries in the MENA are relatively young. Compared with the Levant, which boasts ancient civilizations that flourished in the areas known today as Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, the Persian Gulf comprises countries that have only recently matured into modern states. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, for instance, gained independence and united, respectively, in 1971, whereas Oman started its modernization phase in the 1970s. But it wasn’t until the end of the 20th century that they prospered into their present prosperous states. Most of the countries making up the Arabian Peninsula are among the richest in the world on the basis of GDP (gross domestic product) per capita (“Richest Countries,” 2019). Capitalizing on the oil boom of the 1970s, these states have transformed their societies, creating technologically savvy and architecturally modern cities, the likes of Dubai, Abu-Dhabi, and Doha. Wealthy governments can therefore fulfill the requirements needed to build educational institutions, expand their reach, and build research. In the MENA, the countries that have the financial means to engage in education are, in fact, young, newly modern, or conservative, whereas those countries with old civilizations do not possess the resources to advance their societies and are buried under decades of political conflict and suffering economies. In other words, the basic elements that are required to ensure a steady growth of educational institutions—such as stability, financial means, cultural openness, and experience—are not simultaneously present in any one country.

Yet another pattern common across the wealthy countries in the Gulf is their conservative nature. Cultural traditions in most of the Arab countries value conservativism in all facets of society. This imposes certain limitations that extend to research as well. Douai (2010) argues that conducting research in the Arab region suffers from practical issues deeply steeped in culture and politics. From a cultural standpoint, it is difficult to invite a female volunteer to a public space as a research participant because these spaces are “somewhat associated with ‘loose,’ unwonted behaviour, or mere lack of social desirability” (Douai, 2010, p. 85). Culture is also intertwined with politics in how it impacts research in the region. Anti-American sentiment among Arab people, coupled with the absence of a research tradition, propels participants’ suspicions about the intentions of researchers who are investigating a topic related to the United States (Douai, 2010).

These same sociocultural and political traditions also discourage literacy, limiting means of exposure to the outside world, in an attempt to block any infiltration of Western ideals in the Arab youth. These views, Mellor (2007) contends, are also discernable in Arab scholars’ analysis of the effects of globalization on the Arab world, characterizing it “as a sweeping process imposed upon.” Varying literacy rates in the region have been additionally linked to varying press beginnings. With Oman establishing its first secondary schools in the 1970s compared with Lebanon that has always had high levels of literacy, to press starting in the early 1800s in Iraq and Egypt compared with the 1930s in Bahrain (Rugh, 2004), basic literacy plays a significant role in how Arab audiences perceive other cultures. For what concerns research, the negative impact of low literacy extends beyond respondents’ self-reports and response rates, and may skew the recruitment process (Douai, 2010).

Contemporary History

The effects of history are not restricted to the past but are also apparent in the present. Although nations’ histories play a huge role in their development, current political and societal situations are as effective in discouraging research. Perhaps the most decapitating setback the region has been experiencing in the last few decades is conflict and the ensuing psychological effects on its people. Although several countries, mainly those in the Gulf, have little to worry about in terms of life security and personal safety, the Levant and North Africa have been living in constant fear that threatens daily life. The most recent national protests in Lebanon and Iraq are a case in point. In Lebanon, the October 2019 anti-government nationwide protests occurred in the middle of the college semester, disrupting the flow of education. A few weeks later, similar protests in Iraq broke, threatening the school year. Bloody clashes and wars have characterized the conflict in the region, with Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria leading the revolts in 2011. To this day, the war in Syria has not ended and has so far resulted in the displacement of 5.9 million Syrians and put 11.7 million people in need of humanitarian assistance (Syria Fact Sheet, 2019). Although Egypt experienced intermittent calm, it has been dealing with internal conflict since 2011. Tunisia, which was the first country in the region to get rid of its dictator, needed 8 years for its democracy to form and introduce relative stability to the country. Although the experience some of these countries have had with conflict is fairly recent, Lebanon and Palestine have dealt with it for several decades. Experiencing conflict, we now know, is not limited to the person who lives it. Recent advancement in molecular biology and genetics has revealed traumatic experiences can pass on to generations through the process of epigenetics (Yeshurun & Hannan, 2019). In the middle of all these complications, it seems naïve to wonder why media research is not a top priority.

Education and Higher Learning

Closely tied to the historical roots and age of the countries is their engagement with education in institutions of higher learning. In the Arab countries, society has traditionally favored the natural sciences, with less value given to social sciences, and even less for the arts. These patterns are evident in enrollment numbers in universities, with STEM fields attracting more students with the promise of better career prospects. Touting STEM education as “the means to a problem-solving and innovation-based approach to progress,” Forbes Middle East claims the field is imperative to mold future leaders (null, 2018). The Gulf has invested largely in innovative technology, the most recent instance found in Abu-Dhabi that is set to launch the world’s first AI university in September 2020 (Gandhi, 2019). Times Higher Education’s most recent list of best universities in the Arab world reveals most to be specialized in science and technology (“Best universities in the Arab world,” 2019). In research, the highest rank Arab university that offers a communication and media studies program is Qatar University in the 424th spot, compared with the 201st spot that King Abdulaziz University occupies in the overall ranking of 1,397 universities across 92 countries (“World University Rankings, 2020,” n.d.). Besides ranking, almost all institutions of higher education in the Arab countries are relatively young and had a short time period to develop their programs, compared with leading universities such as Oxford (1,096), Harvard (1,636), and Cambridge (1,209). With the exception of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, founded in the year 970 as a religious university with nonreligious subjects added only in 1961, and Lebanon’s American University of Beirut and Saint Joseph University, founded in 1866 and 1872, respectively, all other universities are barely more than 100 years old (Asharq Al-Awsat, 2017).

The focus on the sciences in the Arab countries, however, is not in the least different from what the West experienced toward the end of the 19th century. Under the influence of Darwin’s natural selection ideas, scholars still turned to brain activity to explain changes in animals’ brains and to examine human consciousness, preferring it to looking for solutions in the changing environmental and social conditions that required different forms of adaptation (Kagan, 2009). Whereas renowned theorist Robert K. Merton (1957) believed the natural sciences had the advantage of “centuries of cumulating scientific research” (p. 87), others refused the labeling of the social sciences as “immature,” arguing that the correspondence principle of physics renders the social sciences as mature as the natural sciences, with the only difference being the absence of one dominant paradigm (Szmatka, 1983). If sociology, which together with psychology forms the foundation on which mass communication research was built, received such heated debates about its existence in research, what becomes of media research, which has had its own struggles to advance as a social science? Two decades ago, DeFleur (1998) lamented the decline in innovations in mass communication research, despite the growth of the media labor force and media curricula. Today, these indicators have failed to produce milestones in the Arab world as well. Particularly, the lack of programmatic approach, lack of funding, and a shift to critical analysis research (DeFleur, 1998) seem to be major concerns in Arab media scholarship. Although the paucity of Arab media research could be partially attributed to its recency, and subsequently the need of time to develop properly, progress is not bound to occur without a rigorous research culture and an accompanying promotion culture. It is not uncommon for some Arab universities, particularly governmental institutions, to compromise research rigor by establishing lax promotion criteria that rely on quantity instead of quality, providing tenure merely for publishing a study, even if it is in a predatory journal (Anonymous reviewer, personal communication, 2020). In such cases, publishing in the Arab region sometimes is more about who can pay the publication fees than who can create quality knowledge.

Challenges in Research

Communication researchers in the Middle East face several issues when conducting research, one of which is sampling. Given the importance of proper sampling procedures in quantitative studies, the ability to carry out high-quality research is contingent on access to the population, in addition to obtaining a sampling frame. In the Arab region, citizen censuses are not available, not reliable, or not accessible. Same goes for any type of data, which pose a structural barrier to data journalists in the Arab countries, partly due to governments’ treatment of data as proprietary (Lewis & Nashmi, 2019). For the most part, reliable figures about audiences’ media consumption habits and basic are insufficient (Douai, 2010). Although qualitative research studies may not suffer from the need to obtain random or representative samples, relying mostly on convenient sampling procedures, the process of selection that is somehow representative of the population still remains an issue for the reasons mentioned above (Douai, 2010).

Besides methodological difficulties, another factor that Arab scholars face is a restriction on the type of knowledge production they want to engage in, a problem that Europe experienced in 19th century. In the rigid European class structure that combined the aristocracy with middle-class professionals, young scholars who wished to work in the natural sciences were prone to investigate the problems the elders in the community deemed important (Kagan, 2009). Similar to what those youth underwent, novice scholars in the Arab countries are sensitive to the topics Western scholars find worthy of studying. Dominated by research themes that senior scholars and media research heavyweights probe, newcomers to the field are obliged to carry on these traditions lest they seem overconfident. Such restrictions are also evident in the decisions some Western journal editors take when the research focuses on an unknown country assumed to have little to contribute to knowledge building. Faced with such desk rejections, Arab researchers are bound to be demotivated to pursue topics related to the region. According to Livingstone (2012), journals’ bias is not about studying one country but which country, considering some national studies, notably in the United States, still go unquestioned and their importance taken for granted.

In the publishing domain, language poses yet another major challenge for non–English-speaking countries. Although publishing in the Arabic language stands as a shield against postcolonialism and enhances indigenization efforts, it limits the readership to those speaking the language, closing off the doors to the international community. Valuable in its own context, research in local languages, Livingstone (2012) contends, has “uncertain relevance to the wider international effort to grasp the contours of a rapidly globalizing and even more mediated world” (p. 415). Yet another challenge that language presents is journal rankings. Faced with a choice to write and publish research in the English language in a highly ranked journal or write and publish in Arabic in an unranked journal, many researchers, especially tenure-track faculty, would choose the first to satisfy the policies of their institutions that have come to rely on journal metrics and indexing bodies to gauge the quality of faculty’s research.

Cross-Pollination and Normative Theories

In the research community, the invisible college is an essential component of the production and dissemination of knowledge (Chang & Tai, 2005). Its value lies in how it brings together a cohort of people with a shared mindset and facilitates communication and interaction among them (Nadel, 1983). What results from this academic socialization are back-and-forth discussions of scholarly value, leading to cross-pollination and exchanges of ideas. As these interactions require a starting point with specific settings, such as conferences, they become restricted to a group of scholars who have an already established relationship within the invisible college. Most often than not, this group comprises those non-Western scholars who have received their education in research universities in the West. Cross-pollination, then, is left to the minority who are able to travel, excluding those who do not possess these means and/or do not speak the English language. One concern about these types of exchanges is the dominance of normative theories and practices at both the academic and professional levels. The curricula of non-Western higher education institutions are strongly influenced by the West due to colonial rules (Abdi, 2006; Lee, 2011) and/or the dominance of faculty who received their education in the United States, resulting in the Westernization of the teaching, learning, and research aspects of the sciences, among which is communication (Lee, 2011). Although many scholars agreed on the need to break away from the Euro-American control of the field, they diagnosed the problems in different ways (Waisbord & Mellado, 2014). By de-Westernization, some meant “relinquishing” the influence of the academic tradition of major Western countries, whereas others understood it as a de-emphasis of the United States’ dominant positivist paradigm, or Western Europe’s interpretive paradigm (Lee, 2011, p. 80). According to Kraidy (2011), a true internationalization of the field requires “the integration of theoretical ideas and historical experiences from the non-West in knowledge production not only in the West but also about the West” (p. 51). The meaning of de-Westernization also varies depending on where the debate takes place. In the West, the conversation promotes the need to broaden academic knowledge by including research experiences from the margins, whereas the rest of the world is more concerned with reorienting knowledge production against academic Eurocentrism (Waisbord & Mellado, 2014). In Asia, resistance to the Eurocentric origin of the communication field has taken an Asiacentric approach that derives theoretical insights from Asian cultures (Miike, 2006). This and most other anti-Eurocentric approaches are constructed on the global divide in communication research but extend beyond the East-West nexus (Gunaratne, 2009). By “East,” Gunaratne (2009) most likely meant East Asia only because he attributed the “momentous phenomenon” of the emergence of scholarship to one based on the “philosophical genius of Buddha, Laozi, Confucius, Nagarjuna, and others” (p. 366). Interestingly, most Asian approaches have almost exclusively meant East Asia and India, rarely going beyond the geographies of these countries. In this regard, the so-called periphery that constitutes non-Western scholarship, in fact, has produced its own periphery, thus becoming the center with Arab scholarship as one of its orbits. Arab researchers, thus, face battles at two fronts: the Eurocentric as well as Asiacentric normative approaches. To tackle this issue, Kraidy (2011) promoted a South-to-South dialogue that establishes local-to-local connections to move toward a truly global research agenda. His theorization of the “translocal” challenges the global, Western node that has been accepted as the center through which all local communication flows (Kraidy, 2011), without making any region “the center.”

Talks about normative theories and the inherent exclusion they entail cannot be complete without some all-encompassing nomenclature that tends to lump what falls outside the norm into one group. For instance, the massive area known as the Arab world that extends from the westernmost tip of North Africa to the borders of Iran comprises countries that seem to have one identity to outsiders yet are regarded as completely diverse to the countries themselves. Brought together by the Arabic language and cultures that spring from the tribes that first inhabited the region (Rugh, 2004), the Arab countries in the MENA share common bonds but also differ on many fronts, which renders the notion of one homogeneous region moot. Even the concept of one uniform language is misguided. The many dialects of Arabic make it difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of a pan-Arab identity that speaks the same language (Mellor, 2007). Although social media function as a public sphere for Arab communities based on shared language, national identity is more dominant than an Arab one (Al-Rawi, 2018). In essence, an Arab identity is as ambiguous as a European or an Asian one. Therefore, applying normative theories to analyze “Arab media” would fail to produce adequate explications that could advance our knowledge of the region.

Moving Away From Centrism

Among the many who have written about de-Westernization, some believe that dichotomizing intellectual paradigms is uncalled for, and the East versus West or emic versus etic debate is not necessarily a healthy discussion (Chen, 2011). These scholars do not subscribe to the necessity to create a region-specific paradigm that is meant to answer the questions of the region only. Such an approach, Kuo and Chew (2011) believe, would bring us back to the shortcomings of Eurocentrism that non-Western scholars have long critiqued. Creating an Asiacentric approach, they contend, is presuming Asians differ from others (Kuo & Chew, 2011). Similarly, Al-Ghazzi (2014) reminds us that although the purpose of de-Westernization is “to counter the claim that Western theory is universally applicable and to encourage the contribution of non-Western scholars . . . it is misleading to assume that non-Western contexts are necessarily and essentially different” (p. 448). Central to this idea is the “alternative discourses” approach that Alatas (2011) proposed and that highlights “the contribution of non-Western systems of thought to theories and ideas” while not rejecting Western knowledge (p. 241). Waisbord and Mellado (2014) encourage such approaches, believing “local cultures carry the impetus to challenge Western notions of communication [since they are] embedded in different conceptions about knowledge, humanity, identity, individualism, and community” (p. 366).

A ripe area of theory building that is indigenous but can become universal is research on the Arab uprisings. Although research on the media’s relationship with protests and social movements is not new to the West (e.g., Gitlin, 1980), the situation in the Arab countries calls for revising the previous approaches as well as new theorizations of media and social movements. Such an approach need not be region-specific or culture-specific but would contain elements that are. Certainly, academic discussions about the relationship of culture with theory building are rampant. Wang (2014) described geocultural theory as the result of a culture-specific approach that explains and predicts phenomena in a specific geographic and cultural boundary, as opposed to the culture-general approach that does not place any such limitations. Placing culture at the center of inquiry, Kuo and Chew (2011) also suggested a culture-centric method they defined as a metatheory capable of solving the issue of a polarized academic field. In the context of the Arab uprisings, an interpretation of Kuo and Chew’s culture-centric approach would place theorizations of mediated social movements as specific to the Arab culture itself yet would connect them to the other culture-specific approaches to achieve universality. Emphasizing the significance of universality while appreciating the value of culture, I propose a culture-sensitive approach that relies on an understanding of cultural phenomena as it devises replicable research designs for generalizations. This approach, thus, accepts the political, legal, and cultural influences, as well as the role of the youth—elements that were central to Arab uprisings—to be essential to theorizations of mediated social movements. Taking into account these factors, the ensuing research design would allow for replication, which in turn would leave room for constant revisions to build theory that explains and predicts mediated social movements beyond the Arab uprisings.

Another step away from centrism—whether it is geographic, cultural, or methodological—can be applied to measurements of ideology that form the basis of most political communication research. In the West, ideology is commonly measured as left or right, and liberal or conservative. A better conceptualization of political ideology that applies to some countries in the Arab region would be sectarianism. Although sectarianism is dominant in Lebanon and post-Hussein Iraq, and exists in Bahrain and Yemen as well, it is practically absent in the neighboring states. As such, researchers studying selective exposure would need to be adept in local culture and replace the typical Western measures of political ideology with sectarian ideology, wherever applicable, without jeopardizing the integrity of the theory. This approach eliminates the concern about the origin of the theory, focusing instead on its application to local communities while introducing new measures. In this context, Hall’s (1992) strategies to absorb globalization also apply. Adopting Western models need not be a complete application, but rather a form of translation that incorporates elements from Western theories into the local context. El-Richani (2016), for instance, adapted Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) media systems dimensions to the Lebanese context, creating a revised model that fits the country yet has parallels with other models. Finding commonalities among the various contexts safeguards the indigenousness of local theories while creating overlapping points of interest that could be further developed. In the Latin American case, Arcila Calderón et al. (2018) found that indigenous communication “complements rather than rejects Western communication thought” (p. 194). Therefore, achieving a balance between applicability of concepts across settings and generalizations based on single national cases (Waisbord & Mellado, 2014) would satisfy the various approaches that call for a culture-specific mindset that is both local and universal at the same time. As such, the above propositions advocate for a reciprocal approach that takes from established theory—regardless of where it originated—translates it into local culture, and adds to it for the purpose of further refinement. Inversely, they devise concepts embedded in local culture and extrapolate them to the center. Refinement is important as concepts require constant verification before they can achieve theory status that describes, explains, and predicts (Shoemaker et al., 2004).

When theorizing culture, it is necessary to take into considerations the various elements of history, political system, legal framework, and technology among others, while distinguishing their significance levels among the Arab countries. Concerning history, although knowledge of the colonial past of some of the Arab countries creates an understanding of their present, the cases largely differ. The French colonization of Northern Africa, for instance, has left long-lasting marks on the countries compared with the much shorter French mandate of the Levant. Although the French language has largely impacted oral and written communication in Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria, its influence is less potent on Lebanon, and even lesser on Syria. Alongside history, the political system and legal framework are essential factors to include in examining culture in Arab media research. Because of their legislative power, governments, whether capitalist or socialist, monarchical or parliamentary, devise laws and regulations to maintain control over the media. Finally, technology and its interrelated affordances make it an integral part of any analysis of culture. With the continuous integration of telecommunications into global information systems (Kuo & Chew, 2011), what was inconceivable in the past has become a reality for some countries in the Global South. In previous times, audiences in authoritarian Arab countries had a limited media agenda to select from because news content was homogeneous across all media. The introduction of digital media and the relative freedom it has brought Arab audiences have changed the meaning of news consumption, reviving the possibility of examining specific concepts—such as selective exposure—in the Arab world. Acknowledging these elements to be essential components of Arab culture also means efforts should be made to ensure that “Arab culture” is not an umbrella term to mean the entire region, due to the existence of subcultures that make it impossible to conceive of a uniform culture. In other words, the variances that exist among the countries’ historical, political, legal, and technological systems mean nuances exist in the term “culture” as well.

As different facets to one solution, the above aspects unite to advocate for a more rigorous and methodical approach to Arab media research. Merging global theories with local contexts satisfies the conditions Bohman (1991) advocated for when he proposed complementing “contextualized interpretation” that relies on native researchers’ insider knowledge with “rational interpretation” that takes care of methodological functions and the standardization needed for comparative research (p. 143). These elements combined could spur programmatic research based on theories that are adapted to the culture and traditions of the country in question and could lead to paradigms that apply to other cultures as well. Kraidy’s (2005) conceptualization of “critical transculturalism” that integrates the various forms of hybridity into a theoretical framework serves as an example of how Arab researchers can initiate paradigmatic scholarship. His work on the multiple-modernities theoretical project is yet another example about how local-born theories are not only possible but could also inform global perspectives (Kraidy, 2011).

Collaborative Research

Complementing the above recommendations are collaborations across countries within and outside the region. The merits of collaborations through comparative research projects and programmatic approaches could partially reduce the challenges local researchers face. Most importantly, they could overcome geographic limitations and assemble knowledge along similarities that do not always revert to normative theories. One way around the neglect that small countries experience in international research circles has been participating in cross-national research projects for a chance to be recognized (Livingstone, 2012). This approach, although beneficial to countries outside the known powerhouses, is still problematic for “inadvertently privileging the dominant norm over the norms of ‘others’” (Livingstone, 2012, p. 420). To overcome this issue, the previous recommendation of a culture-sensitive, universal theory based on standardized approaches could be implemented in comparative research. The past decade has witnessed several global efforts to produce knowledge that transcends nation-states and geographic boundaries, the most significant of which could very well be the multination Journalistic Role Performance study that brings together 49 nations in its second wave (Home, n.d.). Theories are not imposed, methodologies are adaptable, and measurements are fluid. This approach allows for standardization across the nations, while respecting the individuality of each country. Another international, collaborative project that sprung from the protests that occurred in late 2019 across various countries around the world measures selective exposure and media trust during protests in five countries in four regions (Media uses, 2020). The surveys attempt to test selective exposure in the context of anti-governmental social movements, drawing from the Arab countries’ protests but extending its theorization beyond the Arab region. Although surveys distributed in Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran emphasized the cultural similarities among these countries by testing political ideology along religious and sectarian measures, those in Chile and Hong Kong use other measures of ideology. The above study also serves as an illustration of how collaborative projects within the Middle East itself are important in promoting a dialogue across countries that experience similar conditions. The value lies in research productions that emphasize the universality of human behavior and communication, rather than political and societal differences.

Epistemological Approaches to Arab Media Research: Balance and Inclusiveness

A move away from centrism also means embracing all epistemologies. Whereas an understanding of the individual as part of its milieu is crucial to meaning creation, methodological standardization is crucial for theory building (DeFleur, 1998). The positivist perspective views theories as “ultimate of goal of science” (Severin & Tankard, 2001, p. 11), but it also necessitates that theories undergo constant replication to advance the field. Theory-building, therefore, benefits greatly from methodological standardization that ensures concepts are defined and tested in a similar manner, that hypotheses are derived accurately from theory, and are replicated to accumulate evidence (DeFleur, 1998; Eveland, 1997). The health of a discipline, Kuhn (1962) contends, requires the presence of a paradigm that extends beyond theory and methodology. Although The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn, 1962) has been highly controversial in its views, it has been widely adopted for its delineation of what paradigmatic research means (Kaiser, 2012).

If we were to judge the health of Arab media research, we would find a young field that has struggled to produce paradigmatic contributions. Although many studies theorize media-related topics from a cultural perspective, there is little or no programmatic research that informs theory beyond the single case study. As stated earlier, the historical/cultural approach a majority of the research has taken has rendered the products information-rich texts about the past rather than an attempt to provide a theoretical paradigm to guide the coming generations of researchers. Although critical discourse analysis and other qualitative methods have thrived, there’s dearth of research in quantitative methodologies that are needed to achieve a balance in research output and produce coherent research to serve as the foundation on which new theoretical advances can be developed. This approach does not ignore the opposing views that call for a de-emphasis of positivism for de-Westernization purposes (Lee, 2011). Rather than being a purely epistemological argument, this essay advocates for a hybrid, culture-sensitive and empirical research approach that takes into account the ontological beliefs constituting both paradigms in an effort to deeply understand the subject area as well as provide a base of universal comparisons.

Epistemologically, it would be difficult if not impossible to impose specific methodologies because an either-or approach does not suit the efforts to advance knowledge about Arab media if the goal is theory building on the universal level. Although empirical research and its belief in external validity forms the base of any paradigmatic research, interpretivist approaches can build programmatic research agendas as well. In the interpretivist tradition, for instance, case studies cannot build paradigms, but comparative research can. Kraidy (2011) proposes a multisited ethnography as a comparative research project that includes local sites “without placing the West at the theoretical and normative center of the analysis” (p. 55). In the case of positivist research, the nature of the studies yields comparable results and standardized measurements. Among all empirical methodologies, however, experiments would most likely be the most useful, because unlike other methods, they are more interested in internal mechanisms and the psychological process of effects instead of the sample itself (Spencer et al., 2005).