And justice for all: Revisiting the Global Belief in a Just World Scale

The Global Belief in a Just World Scale (GBJWS) has been widely used in measuring the Belief in a Just World (BJW) personality trait. Despite its widespread application across the social sciences, the validity of this scale has not been sufficiently tested in the literature. In this research, the authors examine the internal and external validity of the GBJWS using both standard correlational analyses and structural equation modeling (SEM). Specifically, the authors test the concurrent validity, internal consistency, unidimensional structure, convergent validity, and both measurement and latent mean invariance of the scale across gender and culture. The results of a pilot study suggest strong concurrent validity of the GBJWS with other BJW scales, and the findings of the two main studies support the internal and external validity of GBJWS across gender and culture. The authors’ results further show an overall greater level of BJW of Chinese individuals compared to Americans. The present research provides a much needed investigation of the validity of the GBJWS, and answers calls for research examining the scale’s utility across different populations.     

Beyond congruence measures for the evaluation of personality factor structure replicability: An exploratory structural equation modeling approach

The present study aims to illustrate an encompassing approach to the evaluation of personality factor structure replicability based on novel exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) methods. This approach comprises formal tests of measurement invariance applied to the flexible ESEM framework and overcomes the limitations of congruence measures that have traditionally been used to assess factor replicability in personality research. On the basis of 1566 responses to the widely-used NEO Five-Factor-Inventory (NEO-FFI), we demonstrate this ESEM approach in the context of examining the invariance of the NEO-FFI factor structure across gender. The approach is shown to converge with traditional congruence measures and extend these measures for examining factorial structure consistency. In addition, more general replicative data supporting the validity of the NEO-FFI are reported. We discuss the ESEM approach as a viable alternative to the congruence approach and acknowledge some important limitations of the method.