ABSTRACT
Surveys can be a key source of information in both leadership studies and for leaders of all types of organizations to use in their day-to-day decision making. It is critical that members of diverse populations are included in survey results, whether surveys are done across countries or within multicultural nations. Survey translation and pretesting are complex undertakings and there is a great deal of literature that can help to both design and interpret results from surveys done across languages and cultural groups. This chapter first provides an overview of the complexity of multilingual surveys and then delves into best practices for survey translation. We discuss both common and innovative translation methods, as well as the pitfalls related to survey translation. We also discuss how to best conduct an expert review of a survey translation. Finally, the chapter includes information on how to include respondent voices in the survey development process through pretesting of translated surveys. After reading this chapter, leadership studies scholars should be able to critically evaluate multilingual and multicultural survey designs and be familiar with concrete steps to follow in the design of new multilingual and multicultural surveys.
