How Do Russians Perceive and Justify the Status Quo: Insights From Adapting the System Justification Scales

This paper aims to adapt the system justification scales (general, political, economic, and gender) for the Russian socio-cultural context and to carry out their psychometric analysis. In Study 1 (N = 450), the original items from four system justification scales on a Russian sample were tested. The results suggested that none of the original scales worked properly in Russia and all of them demonstrated weak fit indices. In Study 2 (N = 553), culturally specific grounds for system justification in the Russian context were highlighted and tested. The results of this study confirmed that all the adapted scales demonstrated a good fit to the data. In Study 3 (N = 1,011), the invariance of system justification scales and the convergent and discriminant validity of the scales was tested. The results confirmed that the general, political, and economic system justification scales demonstrated full invariance, while the gender system justification scale showed partial invariance for multigroup comparison. All the scales convergent and discriminant validity, which leads to consider them as an effective tool for measuring system justification in various types of social relationships in Russia. The role of socio-cultural characteristics in justifying the status quo is discussed.

Evaluation of the Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale in a Diverse Sample of Rural Early Adolescents

Although life satisfaction has been associated with maladjustment and adverse experiences among adolescents, few validated measures of life satisfaction have been evaluated for use with diverse populations. The Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS) is a promising measure that has been validated in samples of White and Black adolescents. This study used an item response theory approach to evaluate its psychometric properties in a diverse rural sample of early adolescents and its concurrent associations with other measures of youth adjustment. Support was found for partial invariance across sex and racial and ethnic identities. Scores on the BMSLSS were also correlated with measures of youth adjustment. However, the strength of these correlations differed for adolescents of different racial and ethnic identities. Findings suggest that the BMSLSS is a psychometrically sound measure for assessing life satisfaction in diverse samples of adolescents and highlights the importance of assessing invariance across racial and ethnic groups.

Psychometric examination of the Russian version of the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress scales-21

The Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales-21 (DASS-21) is one of the most common instruments for assessing psychological distress [2]. The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Russian DASS-21. The participants were 1,153 Russian-speaking adults aged 18 to 84 years. In addition to the Russian DASS-21, the participants completed the Symptom Check List-90-Revised (SCL-90-R) and Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). A series of confirmatory factor analyses showed the bifactor structure of the Russian DASS-21, full invariance by gender and partial invariance by age. The Russian DASS-21 scores were negatively correlated with the SF-36 scores and positively associated with the SCL-90-R scores, suggesting the convergent validity. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were 0.90, 0.85 and 0.91 for the depression, anxiety, and stress subscales, and 0.95 for the general psychological distress score, indicating the internal reliability. Thus, the Russian DASS-21 is a valid and reliable instrument and can be used for screening and monitoring psychological distress in Russian-speaking respondents.

Latent Congruence Model to Investigate Similarity and Accuracy in Family Members' Perception: The Challenge of Cross-National and Cross-Informant Measurement (Non)Invariance

Several methods are available to answer questions regarding similarity and accuracy, each of which has specific properties and limitations. This study focuses on the Latent Congruence Model (LCM; Cheung, 2009), because of its capacity to deal with cross-informant measurement invariance issues. Until now, no cross-national applications of LCM are present in the literature, perhaps because of the difficulty to deal with both cross-national and cross-informant measurement issues implied by those models. This study presents a step-by-step procedure to apply LCM to dyadic cross-national research designs controlling for both cross-national and cross-informant measurement invariance. An illustrative example on parent–child support exchanges in Italy and Germany is provided. Findings help to show the different possible scenarios of partial invariance, and a discussion related to how to deal with those scenarios is provided. Future perspectives in the study of parent–child similarity and accuracy in cross-national research will be discussed.

Measurement Invariance in the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire: Implications for Culturally Inclusive Parenting Research

Questions persist in the parenting literature regarding how best to define positive and negative parenting behaviors. Are there optimal parenting behaviors shared by mothers and fathers, or among different racial and ethnic groups? This study draws from a nationally representative sample of US parents of school-age children, testing aspects of measurement invariance in the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ) full and short forms. Our goal was to highlight psychometric approaches to enhancing cultural sensitivity and inclusivity in parenting research, by assessing whether self-reported parenting behaviors have similar conceptual structure across groups. Tests of measurement invariance revealed that the factor structure of the APQ was the same across parent gender, race, and ethnicity. While partial invariance was found in some instances, we did not find metric and scalar invariance in comparisons among these groups. We conclude with research- and practice-based implications, and provide recommendations for future measurement development and use.

Mean Comparisons of Many Groups in the Presence of DIF: An Evaluation of Linking and Concurrent Scaling Approaches

One of the primary goals of international large-scale assessments in education is the comparison of country means in student achievement. This article introduces a framework for discussing differential item functioning (DIF) for such mean comparisons. We compare three different linking methods: concurrent scaling based on full invariance, concurrent scaling based on partial invariance using the RMSD statistic, and robust and nonrobust linking approaches based on separate scaling. Furthermore, we analytically derive the bias in the country means of different linking methods in the presence of DIF. In a simulation study, we show that the partial invariance and robust linking approaches provide less biased country means than the full invariance approach in the case of biased items.

Adjusting for Measurement Noninvariance With Alignment Optimization in Growth Modeling

Longitudinal measurement invariance, the consistency of measurement in data collected over time, is a prerequisite for any meaningful inferences of growth patterns. When one or more items measuring the construct of interest shift its measurement properties over time, it leads to biased parameter estimates and inferences on the growth parameters. In this paper, we extended the recently-developed alignment optimization (AO) technique to adjust for measurement biases for growth models. The proposed AO method does not require identification of noninvariant items, and it can adjust for measurement biases even when all items are mild to moderately biased. We demonstrate how the proposed method can be implemented in the R statistical language using a textbook example, and conduct a Monte Carlo simulation study to compare its performance with the partial invariance modeling method. The simulation results show that alignment largely reduces biases in growth parameters and gives better control of Type I error rates, especially when the sample size is at least 1,000. It also outperforms the partial invariance method in conditions when all items are noninvariant. Based on the simulation results, we conclude that AO is a viable alternative to the partial invariance method in growth modeling when it is not clear whether longitudinal measurement invariance holds. Future research can further explore the potential of AO in other longitudinal models, such as alternative growth shapes and change score models.

Collective Self-Esteem and School Segregation in Chilean Secondary Students

Chile has established hybrid policies for the administrative distribution of its educational establishments, leading to significant gaps in educational results and school conditions between public, mixed, and private schools. As a result, there are high levels of segregation, and social and economic vulnerability that put public schools at a disadvantage, affecting their image and causing a constant decrease in enrollment. An abbreviated version of Luhtanen and Crocker’s (1992) collective self-esteem scale was adapted and validated for the Chilean educational context because of its usefulness in studying processes of social segregation and cultural coherence, seeking to identify student perception about the appreciation of school actions in the context of belonging and identification with schools, in order to compare between groups according to types of establishment and assess the effects of school conditions on the perception of students. A representative sample of Chilean secondary students between 9th and 12th grades participated (n = 3635, 52.8% women, average age 15.9 years, SD = 1.1). Descriptive analyses, comparison of means between groups, confirmatory factorial analyses, and multi-group analyses were conducted to test the adjustment and invariance of the unifactorial structure of a reduced version of four items. The results indicated that the scale satisfactorily complies with the proposed adjustment indexes, presents total invariance by gender and partial invariance by administrative dependence, and allows establishing statistically significant differences in the collective self-esteem, indicating a higher score for students in the private system, and a lower score for those in the public system. These results show the negative effects of high school segregation on students’ collective self-esteem, affecting the appreciation of personal, collective, and institutional activities and the sense of belonging. Although previous research has explored some of the effects of school segregation, the present study focuses on collective self-esteem, which is closely related to identity and belonging, and allows for further innovative research on school segregation. The scale is useful as an instrument for researching social conditions of student well-being, in regards to educational management.