Political participation and basic values in Europe: Replication and extension of Vecchione et al. (2015)

Vecchione et al. (Br J Psychol, 106 , 2015, 84) demonstrated the effects of four higher-order values on political participation across 20 European countries. In their Study 1, they found that political participation was related to three higher-order basic values and that these associations were stronger in more democratic countries. The present study attempted a replication using a more rigorous modelling approach. Multilevel structural equation models with latent variables for both participation and basic values replicated the main effects of Self-Transcendence and Conservation values but demonstrated negative effects of Openness values (vs. positive in the original study) and positive effects of Self-Enhancement values (vs. ambiguous or insignificant in the original study), while cross-level interactions indicated weaker effects of values in more democratic countries (vs. the opposite in the original study). These discrepancies appeared mostly due to the original study’s implicit assumption that basic values’ measurement errors were zero. The new results indicated a counter-intuitive similarity of effects of supposedly opposite values. Self-Transcendence–Self-Enhancement is suggested to be a politically motivating value dimension, whereas Openness to Change–Conservation is a dimension that discourages political participation regardless of the preferred extreme.     

Cross-Cultural Measurement of Positive and Negative Emotions in Adolescence: Evidence from Three Countries

Journal of Happiness Studies - Cross-cultural assessment of affective well-being among adolescents has received scarce attention in positive psychological research. The present study investigated...     

The Satisfaction with Life Scale in Adolescent Samples: Measurement Invariance across 24 Countries and Regions,Age, and Gender

Measurement of adolescent life satisfaction across cultures has not received much attention in previous empirical research. The present study evaluated measurement invariance of the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) among adolescents in 24 countries and regions (N = 22,710; age range = 13–19 years; 53% female). A single-factor model with residual covariance between a pair of items tapping past life satisfaction fitted well in 19 countries and regions and showed a partial metric invariance. In a subset of nine countries and regions, partial scalar invariance was supported. Partial metric invariance across all 24 countries and regions was achieved when custom model modifications in five countries and regions were included. Three SWLS items showed evidence of noninvariance across cultures. The measurement model was found to operate similarly across gender and age. Our findings suggest that caution is needed when using the SWLS for measuring life satisfaction among adolescents from different cultures.