ABSTRACT

Intended to bridge the gap between the latest methodological developments and cross-cultural research, this interdisciplinary resource presents the latest strategies for analyzing cross-cultural data. Techniques are demonstrated through the use of applications that employ cross-national data sets such as the latest European Social Survey. With an emphasis on the generalized latent variable approach, internationally prominent researchers from a variety of fields explain how the methods work, how to apply them, and how they relate to other methods presented in the book. Syntax and graphical and verbal explanations of the techniques are included. Online resources, available at www.routledge.com/9781138690271, include some of the data sets and syntax commands used in the book.

Applications from the behavioral and social sciences that use real data-sets demonstrate:

  • The use of samples from 17 countries to validate the resistance to change scale across these nations
  • How to test the cross-national invariance properties of social trust
  • The interplay between social structure, religiosity, values, and social attitudes
  • A comparison of anti-immigrant attitudes and patterns of religious orientations across European countries.

The second edition includes six new chapters and two revised ones presenting exciting developments in the literature of cross-cultural analysis including topics such as approximate measurement invariance, alignment optimization, sensitivity analyses, a mixed-methods approach to test for measurement invariance, and a multilevel structural equation modeling approach to explain noninvariance. 

This book is intended for researchers, practitioners, and advanced students interested in cross-cultural research. Because the applications span a variety of disciplines, the book will appeal to researchers and students in: psychology, political science, sociology, education, marketing and economics, geography, criminology, psychometrics, epidemiology, and public health, as well as those interested in methodology. It is also appropriate for an advanced methods course in cross-cultural analysis.

section I|279 pages

MGCFA and MGSEM Techniques

chapter 7|34 pages

Religious Involvement

Its Relation to Values and Social Attitudes

section II|110 pages

Multilevel Analysis

chapter 10|31 pages

Perceived Economic Threat and Anti-Immigration Attitudes

Effects of Immigrant Group Size and Economic Conditions Revisited

chapter 12|16 pages

Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling for Cross-Cultural Research

Exploring Resampling Methods to Overcome Small Sample Size Problems

chapter 13|28 pages

Explaining Cross-National Measurement Inequivalence

A Bayesian Multilevel CFA With Random Loadings

section III|89 pages

Latent Class Analysis (LCA)

section V|82 pages

New and Emerging Topics in Cross-Cultural Analysis

chapter 21|22 pages

Alignment Optimization

Estimation of the Most Trustworthy Means in Cross-Cultural Studies Even in the Presence of Noninvariance

chapter 22|22 pages

Sensitivity Analysis

chapter 23|18 pages

How Should Immigrants Adapt to Their Country of Residence?

A Mixed Methods Approach to Evaluate the International Applicability of a Question From the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS)