The aim of this contribution is to provide researchers involved in quantitative and qualitative cross-national comparative projects with a rationale and practical guidance for analysing socio-economic phenomena in relation to their institutional and socio-cultural settings. The paper tracks the shift in cross-national comparisons in the socia l sciences away from universalistic culture-free approaches to culture-boundedness , which has placed the theory and practice of contextualization at the nexus of cross-national comparative studies .It draws on a wide range of multinational and interdisciplinary studies to address a number of recurring questions , covering the selection of appropriate contextual frames of reference, the impac t of the researcher’s own cultural traditions , issues of equivalence of concepts and interpretation.