etic

pertaining to expressions, perceptions, beliefs, and practices that are universal, or at least shared by several cultural groups; an etic view of a cultural system is one from the perspective of an outsider, based on universal and generalized explanations of behavior, rather than the perspective of the members of the system under study. See also emic.

In anthropology and transcultural nursing, related to a kind of analysis that relies on objective criteria; the description of an illness by an observer of a phenomenon rather than by someone experiencing that phenomenon.