A cautionary tale: Hofstede’s VSM revisited

Hofstede’s cultural model has been widely used to make sense of the differences seen in cross-cultural HCI research.Hofstede’s Value Survey Module (VSM) and the cultural indices it produces are well known in the HCI community. This paper reports on a recent re-examination of the VSM (specifically, VSM94) in nine countries. Contrary to expectations, the data collected did not replicate Hofstede’s findings. Subsequent factor analysis reveals that VSM questions are not resulting in robust, replicable factors. We discuss possible issues in the method of data collection, but given that our method follows that of many other similar studies, our results suggest that the VSM should be interpreted with caution, particularly if it is to be used to adapt interfaces for different cultures.