On Enhancing the Cross‐Cultural Comparability of Likert‐Scale Personality and Value Measures: A Comparison of Common Procedures |
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| Authors: | Jia He Fons JR Van de Vijver Velichko H Fetvadjiev Alejandra de Carmen Dominguez Espinosa Byron Adams Itziar Alonso‐Arbiol Arzu Aydinli‐Karakulak Carmen Buzea Radosveta Dimitrova Alvaro Fortin Given Hapunda Sang Ma Ruta Sargautyte Samantha Sim Maja K Schachner Angela Suryani Pia Zeinoun Rui Zhang |
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| Institution: | 1. Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands;2. Correspondence to: Jia He, Department of Methodology and Statistics, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.;3. E‐mail:;4. Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand;5. Iberoamerican University, Mexico, Mexico;6. University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, San Sebastian, Spain;7. Bah?e?ehir üniversitesi, Istanbul, Turkey;8. Transilvania University of Brasov, Brasov, Romania;9. Stockholms University, Stockholm, Sweden;10. University of Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia;11. Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China;12. University of Vilnius, Vilnius, Lithuania;13. Singapore Management University, Singapore, Singapore;14. Universit?t Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany;15. Universitas Katolik Indonesia Atma Jaya, Jakarta, Indonesia;16. American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon;17. Dickinson College, Carlisle, USA |
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| Abstract: | This study aims to evaluate a number of procedures that have been proposed to enhance cross‐cultural comparability of personality and value data. A priori procedures (anchoring vignettes and direct measures of response styles (i.e. acquiescence, extremity, midpoint responding, and social desirability), a posteriori procedures focusing on data transformations prior to analysis (ipsatization and item parcelling), and two data modelling procedures (treating data as continuous vs as ordered categories) were compared using data collected from university students in 16 countries. We found that (i) anchoring vignettes showed lack of invariance, so they were not bias‐free; (ii) anchoring vignettes showed higher internal consistencies than raw scores where all other correction procedures, notably ipsatization, showed lower internal consistencies; (iii) in measurement invariance testing, no procedure yielded scalar invariance; anchoring vignettes and item parcelling slightly improved comparability, response style correction did not affect it, and ipsatization resulted in lower comparability; (iv) treating Likert‐scale data as categorical resulted in higher levels of comparability; (v) factor scores of scales extracted from different procedures showed similar correlational patterning; and (vi) response style correction was the only procedure that suggested improvement in external validity of country‐level conscientiousness. We conclude that, although no procedure resolves all comparability issues, anchoring vignettes, parcelling, and treating data as ordered categories seem promising to alleviate incomparability. We advise caution in uncritically applying any of these procedures. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology |
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| Keywords: | personality values anchoring vignettes response styles score standardization parcelling |
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