Standard Cross-Cultural Sample

The specification Cross-Cultural sample SCCS is the sample of 186 cultures used by scholars engaged in cross-cultural studies.

Origin

Galton's problem: tests of functional relationships for example, the test of the hypothesis that societies with pronounced male advice are more warlike can be confounded because the samples of cultures are not independent. Traits can be associated non only because they are functionally related, but because they were listed together either through cross-cultural borrowing or through descent from a common cultural ancestor.

Silverman & Messinger 1997; Mace & Pagel 1994.

Scholars engaging in statistical cross-cultural analysis are encouraged to usage the family of cultures in the SCCS, since used to refer to every one of two or more people or things new discussing adds to the number of coded variables capable of being used with already existing variables. By focusing scholarly attention on this pattern of 186 cultures, the data produce steadily improved in scope as well as quality. The 2006 to the University of California eScholarship Repository.

Murdock also founded the Human Relations Area Files HRAF at Yale University in the 1940s. However, the SCCS contains a different rank of cultures, uses a different set of ethnographic sources, together with can be considered entirely distinct from the HRAF.

The dataset is usable to abstraction on the Database of Places, Language, Culture, and Environment D-PLACE.