Linguistic Equivalence, Construct Validity, But Lack Measurement Invariance: An Illustration of Challenges in Cross-Cultural Research on Adolescent Adjustment

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 323-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Xing Tan ◽  
Zhiyao Yi ◽  
Eunsook Kim ◽  
Zhengjie Li ◽  
Ke Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Construct Validity ◽  
Measurement Invariance ◽  
Behavioral Assessment ◽  
Negative Attitude ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Adolescent Adjustment ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Cross Cultural Research

In this study, we illustrated issues related to measure invariance in cross-cultural research involving instrument translation between Chinese and English. We translated and back-translated the third edition of the Behavioral Assessment for Children-Self Report of Personality (BASC-3-SRP) and administered it to 1,574 youth in China and 512 youth in the United States. We found that despite a rigorous approach to achieving linguistic equivalence, statistically demonstrating acceptable internal consistency and construct validity, measurement invariance tests revealed that six of the 16 BASC-3-SRP subscales lacked measurement invariance. Constructs for the first three of the six subscales that lacked measurement invariance (i.e., Negative Attitude toward School, Negative Attitude toward Teachers, and Self-Esteem) are known to be conceptualized differently in collectivistic societies, while constructs for the second three subscales (i.e., Atypicality, Sense of Inadequacy, and Hyperactivity) lacked measurement invariance without known cultural reasons. These results highlight instrument development issues and measurement variance issues that cross-cultural researchers must grapple with.

scholarly journals Analyzing Measurement Invariance of the Students’ Engagement Instrument Brief Version: The Cases of Denmark, Finland, and Portugal

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 297-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. E. Virtanen ◽  
P. Moreira ◽  
H. Ulvseth ◽  
H. Andersson ◽  
S. Tetler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Student Engagement ◽  
Measurement Invariance ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
School Contexts ◽  
Invariance Testing ◽  
National School ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Cross Cultural Research ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Cross National

The promotion of students’ engagement with school is an internationally acknowledged challenge in education. There is a need to examine the structure of the concept of student engagement and to discover the best practices for fostering it across societies. That is why the cross-cultural invariance testing of students’ engagement measures is highly needed. This study aimed, first, to find the reduced set of theoretically valid items to represent students’ affective and cognitive engagement forming the Brief-SEI (brief version of the Student Engagement Instrument; SEI). The second aim was to test the measurement invariance of the Brief-SEI across three countries (Denmark, Finland, and Portugal). A total of 4,437 seventh-grade students completed the SEI questionnaires in the three countries. The analyses revealed that of the total 33 original instrument items, 15 items indicated acceptable psychometric properties of the Brief-SEI. With these 15 items, cross-national factorial validity and invariances across genders and students with different levels of academic performance (samples from Finland and Portugal) were demonstrated. This article discusses the utility of the Brief-SEI in cross-cultural research and its applicability in different national school contexts.

scholarly journals Cross-Cultural Values: A Meta-Analysis of Major Quantitative Studies in the Last Decade (2010–2020)

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 396
Author(s):  
Jamie Lynn Goodwin ◽  
Andrew Lloyd Williams ◽  
Patricia Snell Herzog
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Quantitative Studies ◽  
World Regions ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Cross Cultural Research ◽  
The U.S

Since 2010, scholars have made major contributions to cross-cultural research, especially regarding similarities and differences across world regions and countries in people’s values, beliefs, and morality. This paper accumulates and analyzes extant multi-national and quantitative studies of these facets of global culture. The paper begins with a summary of the modern history of cross-cultural research, then systematically reviews major empirical studies published since 2010, and next analyzes extant approaches to interpret how the constructs of belief, morality, and values have been theorized and operationalized. The analysis reveals that the field of cross-cultural studies remains dominated by Western approaches, especially studies developed and deployed from the United States and Western Europe. While numerous surveys have been translated and employed for data collection in countries beyond the U.S. and Western Europe, several countries remain under-studied, and the field lacks approaches that were developed within the countries of interest. The paper concludes by outlining future directions for the study of cross-cultural research. To progress from the colonialist past embedded within cross-cultural research, in which scholars from the U.S. and Western Europe export research tools to other world regions, the field needs to expand to include studies locally developed and deployed within more countries and world regions.

scholarly journals Translation as an Ecological Tool for Instrument Development

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrey Vinokurov ◽  
Daniel Geller ◽  
Tamara L. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Instrument Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Cross Cultural Research ◽  
American Society ◽  
Theoretical Issues

In this paper the authors outline the translation process involved in Macro International's evaluation of the Department of State's International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Georgia. IVLP is a long-running program in which professionals and prospective leaders from around the world participate in funded short-term visits to the United States to learn first-hand professional practices and values of American society and democracy. The authors highlight the importance of attending to the theoretical issues in, discuss contextual factors inherent in, and outline specific phases of the translation process, and present the modified decentering translation technique adapted for the project. They describe the types of translation equivalencies that were addressed and present findings that attest to the quality of the translation. They underscore the importance of the translation process as a qualitative tool for the instrument development that maps the contexts of people's lives, documents emic-etic aspects of cross-cultural research, and fosters collaborations with all stakeholders of the research project.

scholarly journals Measurement of Family Management in Families of Individuals With Down Syndrome: A Cross-Cultural Investigation

2020 ◽  
pp. 107484072097516
Author(s):  
Marcia Van Riper ◽  
George J. Knafl ◽  
Maria do Céu Barbieri-Figueiredo ◽  
Maria Caples ◽  
Hyunkyung Choi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Down Syndrome ◽  
Internal Consistency ◽  
Internal Consistency Reliability ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Family Management ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
The Family ◽  
Cross Cultural Research ◽  
Management Measure

Down syndrome (DS) is the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability worldwide. The purpose of this analysis was to determine the internal consistency reliability of eight language versions of the Family Management Measure (FaMM) and compare family management of DS across cultures. A total of 2,740 parents of individuals with DS from 11 countries completed the FaMM. The analysis provided evidence of internal consistency reliability exceeding .70 for four of six FaMM scales for the entire sample. Across countries, there was a pattern of positive family management. Cross-cultural comparisons revealed parents from Brazil, Spain, and the United States had the most positive family management and respondents from Ireland, Italy, Japan, and Korea had the least positive. The rankings were mixed for the four remaining countries. These findings provide evidence of overall strong internal consistency reliability of the FaMM. More cross-cultural research is needed to understand how social determinants of health influence family management in families of individuals with DS.

scholarly journals Breaking ground in cross-cultural research on the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia): A multi-national study involving 73 countries

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
René T. Proyer ◽  
Willibald Ruch ◽  
Numan S. Ali ◽  
Hmoud S. Al-Olimat ◽  
Toshihiko Amemiya ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Self Report ◽  
National Study ◽  
Scaling Analysis ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Cross Cultural Research ◽  
Swiss Journal ◽  
Multiple Samples ◽  
Different Cultures

AbstractThe current study examines whether the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) can be assessed reliably and validly by means of a self-report instrument in different countries of the world. All items of the GELOPH (Ruch and Titze, GELOPH〈46〉, University of Düsseldorf, 1998; Ruch and Proyer, Swiss Journal of Psychology 67:19–27, 2008b) were translated to the local language of the collaborator (42 languages in total). In total, 22,610 participants in 93 samples from 73 countries completed the GELOPH. Across all samples the reliability of the 15-item questionnaire was high (mean alpha of .85) and in all samples the scales appeared to be unidimensional. The endorsement rates for the items ranged from 1.31% through 80.00% to a single item. Variations in the mean scores of the items were more strongly related to the culture in a country and not to the language in which the data were collected. This was also supported by a multidimensional scaling analysis with standardized mean scores of the items from the GELOPH〈15〉. This analysis identified two dimensions that further helped explaining the data (i.e., insecure vs. intense avoidant-restrictive and low vs. high suspicious tendencies towards the laughter of others). Furthermore, multiple samples derived from one country tended to be (with a few exceptions) highly similar. The study shows that gelotophobia can be assessed reliably by means of a self-report instrument in cross-cultural research. This study enables further studies of the fear of being laughed at with regard to differences in the prevalence and putative causes of gelotophobia in comparisons to different cultures.

Developing Cross-Cultural Measurement in Social Work Research and Evaluation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thanh Tran ◽  
Tam Nguyen ◽  
Keith Chan
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Outcome Evaluation ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Measurement Properties ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Social Work Research ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Cross Cultural Research

Given the demographic changes and the reality of cultural diversity in the United States and other parts of the world today, social work researchers are increasingly aware of the need to conduct cross-cultural research and evaluation, whether for hypothesis testing or for outcome evaluation. This book’s aims are twofold: to provide an overview of issues and techniques relevant to the development of cross-cultural measures and to provide readers with a step-by-step approach to the assessment of cross-cultural equivalence of measurement properties. There is no discussion of statistical theory and principles underlying the statistical techniques presented in this book. Rather, this book is concerned with applied theories and principles of cross-cultural research, and draws information from existing work in the social sciences, public domain secondary data, and primary data from the author’s research. In this second edition, several changes have been made throughout the book and a new chapter on item response theory has been added. The chapter on developing new cross-cultural instrument has also been expanded with a concrete example.

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