ABSTRACT
Equivalence studies are coming of age. irty years ago there were few conceptual models and statistical techniques to address sources of systematic measurement error in cross-cultural studies (for early examples, see Cleary & Hilton, 1968; Lord, 1977, 1980; Poortinga, 1971). is picture has changed; in the last decades conceptual models and statistical techniques have been developed and rened. Many empirical examples have been published. ere is a growing awareness of the importance in the eld for the advancement of cross-cultural theorizing. An increasing number of journals require authors who submit manuscripts of cross-cultural studies to present evidence supporting the equivalence of the study measures. Yet, the burgeoning of the eld has not led to a convergence in conceptualizations, methods, and analyses. For example, educational testing focuses on the analysis of items as sources of problems of cross-cultural comparisons, oen using item response theory (e.g., Emenogu & Childs, 2005). In personality psychology, exploratory factor analysis is commonly applied as a tool to examine the similarity of factors underlying a questionnaire (e.g., McCrae, 2002). In survey research and marketing, structural equation modeling (SEM) is most frequently employed (e.g., Steenkamp & Baumgartner, 1998). From a theoretical perspective, these models are related; for example, the relationship of item response theory and conrmatory factor analysis (as derived from a general latent variable model) has been described by Brown (2006). However, from a practical perspective,
the models can be seen as relatively independent paradigms; there are no recent studies in which various bias models are compared (an example of an older study in which procedures are compared that are no longer used has been described by Shepard, Camilli, & Averill, 1981).
