ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on a project which studied similarities and differences in families across cultures (Georgas, Berry, Van de Vijver, Kagitcibasi, & Poortinga, 2006). The goal of the project was to study family networks, family roles, and psychological variables in different ecological and sociopolitical systems across 30 countries. The present chapter focuses on the issue of structural equivalence of the above measures at the individual and country level. Structural equivalence implies that the same psychological constructs are measured cross-culturally (Van de Vijver & Leung, 1997); cross-level equivalence implies that the same constructs can serve to explain differences at each of the two levels without committing an ecological fallacy (Hox, 2002). The need to compare variables at different levels of aggregation is an important aspect of multilevel analysis in cross-cultural research (Van de Vijver & Poortinga, 2002).
