Are personality measures valid for different populations? A systematic review of measurement invariance across cultures, gender, and age

Dong, Yixiao; Dumas, Denis

doi:10.1016/j.paid.2020.109956

Cited by 104 publications

(110 citation statements)

References 144 publications

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“…The cross-cultural personality literature suggests that personality trait domains and facets show considerable mean level differences across countries. However, the severe lack of measurement invariance or presence of DIF (Dong & Dumas, 2020;Jankowsky et al, in press) suggests that a large proportion of item or nuance level differences are not accounted for by the overarching facet and trait domain levels. In this study, we examine the degree of cross-cultural variations at each level of the personality model hierarchy.…”

Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Comparisons of the factor structure of the NEO-PI-R (Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Personality Inventory Revised; Costa & McCrae, 1992) derived from principal component analysis suggested a universally applicable factor structure across countries (e.g., McCrae et al, 1998;McCrae, 2002;McCrae & Terracciano, 2005a). However, more recent examinations of the factorial equivalence of personality across countries with stricter multi-group confirmatory factor analysis cast doubt on these findings: A systematic review (Dong & Dumas, 2020) showed that only 43% of studies that tested for cross-cultural measurement invariance found support for metric measurement invariance (i.e., equal factor loadings), whereas full scalar measurement invariance (i.e., equivalent item intercepts across countries) has only been achieved in specifically designed short versions (Jankowsky et al, in press).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Coffee or Tea? Examining Cross-Cultural Differences in Personality Nuances Across Former Colonies of the British Empire

Achaa-Amankwaa¹,

Olaru²,

Schroeders³

2020

Preprint

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Cross-cultural comparisons often focus on differences in broad personality traits across countries. However, many cross-cultural studies report differential item functioning which suggests that considerable group differences are not accounted for by the overarching personality factors. We argue that this may reflect cross-cultural personality differences at a lower level of personality, namely personality nuances. To investigate the degree of cultural similarities and differences between participants of ten countries that formerly belonged to the British Empire, we scrutinized participants’ personality scores on domain, facet, and nuance level of the personality hierarchy. More specifically, we used the responses of 9,110 participants on the IPIP-NEO 300-item personality inventory in cross-validated and regularized logistic regressions. Based on the trait domain and facet scores, we were able to identify the country of residence for 60% and 73% of the participants, respectively. By using the nuance level of personality, we correctly identified the nationality of 89% of the participants. This pattern of results explains the lack of measurement invariance in cross-cultural studies. We discuss implications for cross-cultural personality research and whether the high degree of cross-cultural item-level differences compromises the universality of the personality structure.

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Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Coffee or Tea? Examining Cross-Cultural Differences in Personality Nuances Across Former Colonies of the British Empire

Achaa-Amankwaa¹,

Olaru²,

Schroeders³

2020

Preprint

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“…Because the most optimal approach-estimating each possible combination of items-is too computationally demanding, we used ACO as a heuristic item selection procedure to reduce the number of models that had to be estimated. This study has also shown the usefulness of combinatorial item-selection for the field of psychological assessment, but in particular personality assessment, which suffers from the issues of a lack of model fit (e.g., Hopwood & Donnellan;2010) and MI (Dong & Dumas;2020). ACO or similar metaheuristic procedures (e.g., genetic algorithm; Yarkoni, 2010) have been used in several scale development contexts to improve (among others) model fit and reliability (e.g., Kerber et al, 2019;Leite et al, 2008;Jannssen et al, 2015).…”

Section: Ant Colony Optimizationmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…Because of their use in broad and nationally representative panel studies, these short scales are often used to study personality development across age. However, the comparability of the measurement--measurement invariance (MI)--across age was not considered when developing these scales, resulting in potentially non-comparable factor means across age (e.g., Dong & Dumas, 2020). In addition, nearly all commonly used short scales are Big Five based and neglect the trait domain of Honesty-Humility .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The HEX-ACO-18: Developing an age-invariant HEXACO short scale using Ant Colony Optimization

Olaru¹,

Jankowsky²

2021

Preprint

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In this study, we developed an age-invariant 18-item short form of the HEXACO Personality Inventory for use in developmental personality research. We employed a combination of the item selection procedure ant colony optimization (ACO) and the model estimation approach local structural equation modeling (LSEM). ACO is a metaheuristic algorithm that selects and evaluates items based on the quality of the resulting short scale, thus allowing for the direct optimization of criteria that can only be estimated based on combinations of items, such as model fit and measurement invariance across age. LSEM allows for model estimation and measurement invariance testing across a continuous age variable by weighting participants based on their age, rather than splitting the sample into artificial age groups. Using a HEXACO-100 dataset of N = 6,419 participants ranging from 16 to 90 years of age, we selected a short form optimized for model fit, measurement invariance, facet coverage, and balance of item keying. The resulting HEX ACO 18 short scale showed adequate model fit, scalar measurement invariance across age, and covered three out of four facets from each HEXACO trait domain. Furthermore, the usefulness and versatility of the item and person sampling procedures ACO and LSEM is demonstrated.

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“…Regarding cultural groups, only 17% of cross-cultural comparative quantitative studies verified measurement equivalence in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology (see Boer et al, 2018) or the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Chen, 2008). Similarly, scalar measurement invariance has not been achieved in a single study on child and adolescent psychopathology (Stevanovic et al, 2017) nor in studies using already validated measures of personality psychology (Dong & Dumas, 2020). The situation is similar in research on individualism and collectivism (Chen & West, 2008;Cozma, 2011;Lacko et al, under review), which has been a long-term "flagship" construct in cross-cultural research, and which is therefore applied in the present article as a demonstration of the essentiality of measurement invariance testing in cross-cultural research.…”

Section: Measurement Invariancementioning

confidence: 99%

The Necessity of Testing Measurement Invariance in Cross-Cultural Research: Potential Bias in Cross-Cultural Comparisons with Individualism–Collectivism Self-Report Scales

Lacko¹,

Čeněk²,

Točík³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Individualism and collectivism are some of the most widely applied concepts in cultural and cross-cultural research. They are commonly applied by scholars who use arithmetic means or sum indexes of items on a scale to examine the potential similarities and differences in samples from various countries. For many reasons, cross-cultural research implicates numerous methodological and statistical pitfalls. The aim of this article is to summarize some of those pitfalls, particularly the problem of measurement (non)invariance, which stems from the different understandings of questionnaire items or even different character of constructs between countries. This potential bias (i.e., systematic measurement error) is reduced by latent mean comparisons performed with Multigroup Confirmatory Factor Analysis and the Measurement Invariance procedure within a Structural Equation Modeling framework. These procedures have been neglected by many researchers in the field of cross-cultural psychology, however. In this article we compare “traditional” (comparison of arithmetic means) and “invariant” (latent means comparisons) approaches. Both approaches are demonstrated with data gathered on an Independent and Interdependent Self-Scale from 1386 participants across six countries (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, and Albania). Our results revealed considerable differences between the “invariant” and “traditional” approach, especially in post-hoc analyses. Since “invariant” results can be considered less biased, this finding suggests that the currently prevalent method of comparing the arithmetic means of cross-cultural scales of individualism and collectivism can potentially cause systematically biased results. As we demonstrate, the evaluation of measurement invariance properties of scales used in cross-cultural research has the potential to improve the validity of cross-cultural comparisons of individualism and collectivism.

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Are personality measures valid for different populations? A systematic review of measurement invariance across cultures, gender, and age

Cited by 104 publications

References 144 publications

Coffee or Tea? Examining Cross-Cultural Differences in Personality Nuances Across Former Colonies of the British Empire

Coffee or Tea? Examining Cross-Cultural Differences in Personality Nuances Across Former Colonies of the British Empire

The HEX-ACO-18: Developing an age-invariant HEXACO short scale using Ant Colony Optimization

The Necessity of Testing Measurement Invariance in Cross-Cultural Research: Potential Bias in Cross-Cultural Comparisons with Individualism–Collectivism Self-Report Scales

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