A meeting report: cross-cultural comparability of questionnaire measures in large-scale international surveys

Abstract

The value of cross-country comparisons is at the heart of large-scale international surveys. Yet the validity of such comparisons is often challenged, particularly in the case of latent traits whose estimates are based on self-reported answers to a small number of questionnaire items. Many believe self-reports to be unreliable and not comparable, and indeed, formal statistical procedures very often reject the assumption that the questions are understood and answered in the same way in different countries (measurement invariance). A methodological conference on the comparability of questionnaire scales was hosted by the OECD on 8 and 9 November 2018. This meeting report summarises the discussions held at the conference about measurement invariance testing and instrument design. The report first provides a brief introduction to the measurement models and the accompanying invariance analyses typically used in the industry of large-scale international surveys and points to the main limitations of these current standard approaches. It then presents classical and novel ways to deal with imperfect comparability of measurements when scaling and reporting on continuous traits and on categorical latent variables. It finally discusses the extent to which item design can improve the cross-country comparability of the measured constructs (e.g. by adopting innovative item formats such as anchoring vignettes and situational judgement test items). It concludes with some general considerations for survey design and reporting on invariance analyses and survey results.