ArticleBehavior research methods2024
Does strict invariance matter? Valid group mean comparisons with ordered-categorical items.
Article in Behavior research methods, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Validation of the Arabic Version of Patient Health Questionnaire-9 in Omani and Yemeni Patients With Chronic Physical Diseases.International journal of methods in psychiatric research · 2026Article
- Mental Health and Subjective Vitality in Arabic-Speaking North Africa: A Cross-Cultural Examination of the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF).The Psychiatric quarterly · 2026Article
- Article
- Italian Validation of the Brief Self-Reported Version of the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale for Children.Journal of clinical psychology · 2026Article
- Dynamic measurement invariance cutoffs for longitudinal and dyadic data.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Psychometric properties of the Arabic Motives for Online Gaming Questionnaire.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Shared environment, shared mechanisms: comparing pathways to mental health outcomes among indigenous youth and youth with other ethnic backgrounds.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Further analysis and refinements of the perceived stressors in intensive care units (PS-ICU) scale: a French nation-wide cross-sectional multicentre study.Annals of intensive care · 2025Article
- Measurement structure, invariance, and item functioning of intimate partner violence scales in high-income countries: Results from 30 population-based surveys.Psychology of violence · 2025Article
- Responding to old problems in the Dutch work addiction scale: a psychometric approach in a Peruvian sample.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- The validity of studying healthy aging with cognitive tests measuring different constructs.Scientific reports · 2024Article
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Abstract
Measurement invariance (MI) of a psychometric scale is a prerequisite for valid group comparisons of the measured construct. While the invariance of loadings and intercepts (i.e., scalar invariance) supports comparisons of factor means and observed means with continuous items, a general belief is that the same holds with ordered-categorical (i.e., ordered-polytomous and dichotomous) items. However, as this paper shows, this belief is only partially true-factor mean comparison is permissible in the correctly specified scalar invariance model with ordered-polytomous items but not with dichotomous items. Furthermore, rather than scalar invariance, full strict invariance-invariance of loadings, thresholds, intercepts, and unique factor variances in all items-is needed when comparing observed means with both ordered-polytomous and dichotomous items. In a Monte Carlo simulation study, we found that unique factor noninvariance led to biased estimations and inferences (e.g., with inflated type I error rates of 19.52%) of (a) the observed mean difference for both ordered-polytomous and dichotomous items and (b) the factor mean difference for dichotomous items in the scalar invariance model. We provide a tutorial on invariance testing with ordered-categorical items as well as suggestions on mean comparisons when strict invariance is violated. In general, we recommend testing strict invariance prior to comparing observed means with ordered-categorical items and adjusting for partial invariance to compare factor means if strict invariance fails.
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