Is the DOSPERT gender invariant? A psychometric test of measurement invariance

Abstract

AbstractIt is well established in the risk literature that men tend to take more risks than women. This gender difference, however, is often qualified by its domain specificity. Considering recent research on the domain generality of risk taking as a disposition, there is a need to examine the degree to which men take more risks than women, in general. In order to make substantive conclusions about the gender differences in risk‐taking propensity, one must first establish measurement invariance, which is required for the meaningful interpretation of observed group differences. In this paper, we examined the measurement invariance of the Domain‐Specific Risk‐Taking scale (DOSPERT)—one of the most popular measures of individual differences in risk taking. We found that the DOSPERT violated configural invariance in a bifactor model, indicating that the underlying factor structure of the DOSPERT differs between men and women. Even after removing the social risk dimension, DOSPERT still failed to reach scalar invariance. Taken together, these findings suggest that score differences in the DOSPERT may be due to response artifacts rather than true differences in the latent construct. Therefore, gender differences in the DOSPERT must be interpreted with caution. Implications for the measurement of risk taking are discussed.