Abstract
Examining the influence of culture on personality and its unbiased assessment is the main subject of cross–cultural personality research. Recent large–scale studies exploring personality differences across cultures share substantial methodological and psychometric shortcomings that render it difficult to differentiate between method and trait variance. One prominent example is the implicit assumption of cross–cultural measurement invariance in personality questionnaires. In the rare instances where measurement invariance across cultures was tested, scalar measurement invariance—which is required for unbiased mean–level comparisons of personality traits—did not hold. In this article, we present an item sampling procedure, ant colony optimization, which can be used to select item sets that satisfy multiple psychometric requirements including model fit, reliability, and measurement invariance. We constructed short scales of the IPIP–NEO–300 for a group of countries that are culturally similar (USA, Australia, Canada, and UK) as well as a group of countries with distinct cultures (USA, India, Singapore, and Sweden). In addition to examining factor mean differences across countries, we provide recommendations for cross–cultural research in general. From a methodological perspective, we demonstrate ant colony optimization's versatility and flexibility as an item sampling procedure to derive measurement invariant scales for cross–cultural research. © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology
Highlights
IntroductionIn the last two decades, several large-scale studies have compared personality assessment across cultures to examine the extent to which culture exerts an influence on an individual’s personality (Allik et al, 2017; Bartram, 2013; Kajonius & Mac Giolla, 2017; McCrae, 2001; Schmitt et al, 2007)
In order to demonstrate the implications of this result, we briefly introduce the procedure for testing measurement invariance (MI) in a Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MGCFA) framework and explain the importance of scalar MI for the comparison of means
We discuss the results of the item selection via ant colony optimization (ACO) with respect to the optimization criteria, namely, (a) model fit, (b) MI across countries, (c) reliability, and (d) ratio of negatively and positively keyed items
Summary
In the last two decades, several large-scale studies have compared personality assessment across cultures to examine the extent to which culture exerts an influence on an individual’s personality (Allik et al, 2017; Bartram, 2013; Kajonius & Mac Giolla, 2017; McCrae, 2001; Schmitt et al, 2007). A lack of MI represents one of the central methodological problems in cross-cultural personality research and calls the robustness of previous study results into question Solutions to this issue have already been proposed in the literature, usually taking the form of some type of less strict invariance testing (Cieciuch, Davidov, Algesheimer, & Schmidt, 2018; Muthén & Asparouhov, 2018; Steenkamp & Baumgartner, 1998) that conceals the non-invariance of personality instruments in cross-cultural contexts. The presented studies are heterogeneous in terms of countries, languages, and measurement instruments
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