Abstract. In the construction of scales intended for the use in cross-cultural studies, the selection of items needs to be guided not only by traditional criteria of item quality, but has to take information about the measurement invariance of the scale into account. We present an approach to automated item selection which depicts the process as a combinatorial optimization problem and aims at finding a scale which fulfils predefined target criteria – such as measurement invariance across cultures. The search for an optimal solution is performed using an adaptation of the [Formula: see text] Ant System algorithm. The approach is illustrated using an application to item selection for a personality scale assuming measurement invariance across multiple countries.
I-prune: Item selection for associative classification