Psychometrically and qualitatively validating a cross-national cumulative measure of fear-based xenophobia

.40. The result, a cross-national 5-item scale measuring fear-based xenophobia, was tested by means of the Three-step Test-Interview (Hak, Van der Veer and Jansen 2008) with 10 students in The Netherlands and 10 students in Norway. The analysis of these qualitative interviews shows that individual respondents’ criteria for the ranking of the scale items strongly depend on the way immigrants are framed. Ranking according to different levels of fear turned out to be only one criterion out of several possible ones used by individual respondents. Keywords Xenophobia . Measurement . Mokken Scale Procedure . Cross-cultural . qualitative validation . Three-Step Test-Intervie

Developing and validating a cross-national cumulative scale measuring attitudes toward illegal immigrants

 .40. This cross-national four-item scale was evaluated by means of in-depth interviewing nine participants in the Netherlands and 15 participants in New Zealand. Analysis of the interviews shows that individually ranking the items of the scale is similar to the rank order generated by MSP, but the individual evaluation of the degree of negativity of items strongly depends on the way illegal immigrants are framed by subjects. The contribution of a mixed methods approach is discussed. It is suggested that the present quantitative measuring instruments measure a general average attitude, which may be likened to a measure of the average temperature of a country at a certain moment, while qualitative evaluations vary with the way illegal immigrants are framed by individuals, like variations in local temperatur