Cultural Differences in Punctuality

Cultural Differences in Punctuality June 6, 2005

This is related to an area of interest of Seugnhan. This would be a good joint paper with him since he could cover the theory side of it.

Research Question: Are there culturally differences in punctuality? Do foreigners adapt to the domestic culture?

Data: Teacher evaluation forms.

The main idea of this paper would be to use teacher evaluations as a measure of punctuality. Most teacher evaluations contain a question about whether the teacher usually starts class on time. By collecting information on the teacher’s country of origin we could test for differences in punctuality across cultures. Using information on how long the professor has been in the domestic country would help test for whether foreign born professors become more like the domestic born professors with time. We can also get information on the country of origin of the student responding to the survey to see if this influences the perception of punctuality. I would be really interesting to get similar information from universities in other countries.