ABSTRACT
Cross-cultural research often faces the challenge of comparing means across many groups such as countries, cultures, or even time points. Alignment allows the estimation of trustworthy means based on partially noninvariant measurements. This chapter outlines the main idea of alignment optimization in a nontechnical way, and provides an example of how to use it in Mplus and interpret the results. The alignment optimization seems to be a promising approach for applied researchers because of two major advantages it offers. The first advantage results from the main idea underlying its procedure: Alignment optimization enables an estimation of trustworthy means even when some measurement noninvariance is given. The second advantage of the alignment procedure is its useful and extensive output as implemented in the Mplus software package. There are two options for the alignment procedure that differ in the way that parameters are estimated: the free and the fixed options.
