jibs-methods

Cross-Country & Multilevel Research Design (jibs-methods)

When to trigger

• You are choosing a design for a cross-border or multi-country question
• Your data are nested (individuals in firms in countries) and you need the right structure
• You anticipate reviewers probing measurement equivalence, CMV, or endogeneity
• A reviewer says "the design cannot support a cross-country inference"

JIBS is method-pluralistic; rigor is the gatekeeper

JIBS is paradigmatically and methodologically pluralistic by policy — quantitative, qualitative, mixed, and pure-theory work are all in scope. There is no single mandated method. But its practical center of gravity is theory-driven, hypothesis-testing empirical work on cross-country or multilevel data, held to demanding standards. Pick the design that fits the phenomenon, then engineer in the three rigor demands JIBS reviewers apply most insistently.

Match the design to the claim

Phenomenon / claim	Design
Country/culture shapes a firm or individual outcome	Multilevel (firm/individual nested in country), with country-level predictors
Internationalization as a path-dependent process	Longitudinal/dynamic panel of firms over time (FDI, entry, commitment)
Cross-cultural attitudes/behavior	Multi-country survey with translated, back-translated instruments
Entry-mode / location / governance choice	Discrete-choice archival design on cross-border deals (SDC, fDi Markets)
Deep contextual MNE puzzle	Comparative / multi-country case study (qualitative)

Build in JIBS's three rigor demands at the design stage

1. Cross-national measurement equivalence. Because constructs are studied across countries and cultures, plan multi-group measurement from the outset: identical (translated/back-translated) instruments, and a plan to test configural, metric, and scalar invariance. Equivalence is a first-order concern at JIBS, not an afterthought.
2. Common-method variance (CMV). JIBS actively gatekeeps CMV: survey/same-respondent designs that appear to suffer from CMV are routinely asked to run validity checks and resubmit, per a dedicated "From the Editors" CMV editorial. Design procedural remedies now — temporal/source separation, different respondents for predictor and outcome, archival anchors, a marker variable.
3. Endogeneity / "dynamic endogeneity." For internationalization-as-process designs, JIBS names dynamic endogeneity as a recurring demand: past internationalization, performance, and unobserved firm heterogeneity co-evolve. Plan identification now — instruments, dynamic-panel GMM, lag structure, or a natural experiment — rather than bolting it on later.

Consult the methods-editorial canon

The AIB Research Methods SIG curates ~28 JIBS "From the Editors" methods editorials (2008–2022) on endogeneity, multilevel models, interaction effects, QCA, replication/reproducibility, CMV, and p-values. Reviewers treat these as de facto standards — align your design with the relevant editorial and cite it.

Output format

【Design】multilevel / dynamic-panel / multi-country survey / archival choice / case ...
【Levels & nesting】 ... ; SE-clustering/aggregation plan
【Measurement equivalence plan】translation + configural/metric/scalar test ...
【CMV plan】procedural separations designed ...
【Endogeneity/dynamic-endogeneity plan】identification strategy ...
【FTE editorial alignment】which editorial(s) the design answers to ...
【Next step】jibs-data-analysis

Anti-patterns

• Pooling countries with no plan to test measurement invariance.
• A single-source, single-wave, same-respondent cross-country survey with no CMV remedy.
• Internationalization-process design with no endogeneity strategy.
• Choosing a method by habit rather than fit to the phenomenon.