For creating cultural distance indices the logic of the Kogut-Singh (1988) index as the most popular measure of cultural distance were used. First the composite index of cultural distance between two regions/countries was calculated as an arithmetic average of the variance-corrected squared differences in the four cultural dimensions (the ESS/EVS based indicators of cultural dimensions).

After applying the formula on the ESS/EVS based cultural dimensions of European regions, the output could be presented as a table (matrix), which consists of cultural distance indices for all pairs of regions covered in the analysis.

As sometimes one specific cultural dimension may be of interest (see here), it is often reasonable to include cultural dimensions separately into the analysis instead of using the composite index. Hence, cultural distances according to single dimensions were calculated as well. In order to preserve the same scales allowing comparisons with the composite index, the cultural distance index according to one particular cultural dimension was calculated as variance-corrected squared difference.

This added four tables(matrices), each providing cultural distance indices according to a particular cultural dimension for all pairs of regions covered in the analysis.

More information can be found in the article.