Structural equivalence and differential item functioning in the Social Axioms Survey

The present chapter focuses on the assessment of bias and equivalence of the Social Axioms Survey in a 41-country data set analyzed at the individual level. Two main issues are examined. The first, structural equivalence, addresses the question to what extent the constructs underlying the Social Axioms Survey are universal across the 41 countries. The second, differential item functioning, deals with the question of whether there are particular items or countries that are problematic. Exploratory factor analyses (testing structural equivalence) and analyses of variance (testing item bias) were carried out. The equivalence of the scales was adequate, but neither the exploratory factor analysis nor the analyses of variance provided indisputable support for the equivalence of any scale. The results led to three main conclusions: (1) social axioms show important similarities across cultures; (2) numerical comparisons of scores obtained in different countries must be treated with caution; (3) the observed bias was due to both item and country characteristics. Several items showed secondary (i.e., deviant) loadings in the global factorial solution. Level of economic development and religion (main religious denomination of a country) were associated with bias. In the discussion of our findings, a balanced treatment is recommended to account for both instrument and country characteristics that cause bias

Culture-level dimensions of social axioms and their correlates across 41 cultures

Leung and colleagues have revealed a five-dimensional structure of social axioms across individuals from five cultural groups. The present research was designed to reveal the culture level factor structure of social axioms and its correlates across 41 nations. An ecological factor analysis on the 60 items of the Social Axioms Survey extracted two factors: Dynamic Externality correlates with value measures tapping collectivism, hierarchy, and conservatism and with national indices indicative of lower social development. Societal Cynicism is less strongly and broadly correlated with previous values measures or other national indices and seems to define a novel cultural syndrome. Its national correlates suggest that it taps the cognitive component of a cultural constellation labeled maleficence, a cultural syndrome associated with a general mistrust of social systems and other people. Discussion focused on the meaning of these national level factors of beliefs and on their relationships with individual level factors of belief derived from the same data set