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There is currently a great deal of attention in psychometric and statistical methods on ensuring measurement invariance when examining measures across time or populations. When measurement invariance is established, changes in scores over time or across groups can be attributed to changes in the construct rather than changes in reaction to or interpretation of the measurement instrument. When measurement in not invariant, it is possible that measured differences are due to the measurement instrument itself and not to the underlying phenomenon of interest. This chapter discusses the importance of establishing measurement invariance specifically in postsecondary settings, where it is anticipated that individuals' perspectives will change over time as a function of their higher education experiences. Using examples from several measures commonly used in higher education research, the concepts and processes underlying tests of measurement invariance are explained and analyses are interpreted using data from a US-based longitudinal study on bioscience PhD students. These measures include sense of belonging over time and across groups, mental well-being over time, and perceived mentorship quality over time. The chapter ends with a discussion about the implications of longitudinal and group measurement invariance as an important conceptual property for moving forward equitable, reproducible, and generalizable quantitative research in higher education. Invariance methods may further be relevant for addressing criticisms about quantitative analyses being biased toward majority populations that have been discussed by critical theorists engaging quantitative research strategies.

Research on international marketing usually involves comparing different groups of respondents. When using structural equation modeling (SEM), group comparisons can be misleading unless researchers establish the invariance of their measures. While methods have been proposed to analyze measurement invariance in common factor models, research lacks an approach in respect of composite models. The purpose of this paper is to present a novel three-step procedure to analyze the measurement invariance of composite models (MICOM) when using variance-based SEM, such as partial least squares (PLS) path modeling.

A simulation study allows us to assess the suitability of the MICOM procedure to analyze the measurement invariance in PLS applications.

The MICOM procedure appropriately identifies no, partial, and full measurement invariance.

The statistical power of the proposed tests requires further research, and researchers using the MICOM procedure should take potential type-II errors into account.

The research presents a novel procedure to assess the measurement invariance in the context of composite models. Researchers in international marketing and other disciplines need to conduct this kind of assessment before undertaking multigroup analyses. They can use MICOM procedure as a standard means to assess the measurement invariance.

Many instruments have been developed to measure the perceived luxuriousness of brands, but one of the most frequently used scales is the “brand luxury index” (BLI) from Vigneron and Johnson (2004) that distinguishes between high- and low-luxury brands. Despite its popularity and widespread use in academic research, the scale's psychometric properties and equivalence across cultures have been questioned. Recently, modified versions of the scale have been developed to strengthen the quality of the measurement. However, the performance and the measurement invariance of the modified version have not yet been investigated. The current paper aims to test the model fit of the modified BLI scale and the measurement invariance across gender, age and country groups using nine datasets from a total of three different countries.

This paper conducts a multi-group CFA to examine the measurement invariance of the BLI scale. Nine datasets were used in this study. The data were collected across three countries, the United States (5 datasets), China (2 datasets) and India (2 datasets) from 2016 to 2018.

The results of this analysis suggest that the modified BLI scale has an acceptable model fit and can be interpreted equivalently across gender and age groups. Metric invariance was found among the US, China and India. However, scalar measurement invariance was established only across two countries: the US and India. A follow-up analysis shows that partial scalar invariance can be established across the US, China and India when removing constraints on the parameters of three items: exclusive, precious and sophisticated.

This study is the first study to test the model fit of the modified BLI scale. The findings of this paper contribute to both the academia and industry. The authors recommend scholars and marketers to use a modified 19-item BLI scale to measure the perceived luxuriousness of brands in future research. First, the modified BLI scale tested in the current study offers very good performance with model fit values of a quality that has rarely been seen in prior research. The original scale of Vigneron and Johnson (2004) has been criticized for its poor model fit (Christodoulides et al., 2009). The modified scale of Doss and Robinson (2013) also has problems with the fit value. Second, the modified 19-item scale also shows adequate measurement invariance across different gender, age and countries. For scholars and marketers, the establishment of the metric invariance of the modified 19-item BLI scale implies that the scale can be used across gender, age and countries (the US, China and India) if the purpose of the study is to understand the relationship between some variables and perceived luxuriousness of a brand.

An important assumption in testing theoretical models is measurement invariance. However, little research in construction project management investigates the issue of measurement invariance. To bridge the gap, the current paper aims at: first, testing trust measurement invariance in project teams across gender; second, delineating various measurement invariance tests and demonstrating them with Amos; and last but not least, increasing researchers' awareness about measurement invariance issue in the construction project management field.

The measurement invariance of trust across gender is investigated using survey data collected from architects in project design teams of A-level architectural design institutes in China. Multisample confirmatory factor analysis is conducted with Amos to test configural invariance, metric invariance, scalar invariance, factor covariance and variance invariance, error variance invariance, latent mean invariance of the Chinese version of McAllister's two-dimension trust scale.

All the test results of the above invariances are supportive. Goodness-of-fit indexes such as CFI deserve more empirical studies to verify.

The results imply that the trust structure of male and female architects is equivalent. In other words, male and female architect data of trust research in construction project management could be aggregated.

It is recommended that test of measurement invariance should be conducted while new measurement scales are under construction.

Since all the invariance tests are rarely conducted within a single study, the current research is the first paper to investigate the measurement invariance issue in the construction industry.

The purpose of this paper is to provide further validation of an alternative measurement model of brand trust and demonstrate the robustness and measurement invariance of the model in a cross-cultural context.

Survey data collected from the USA and China were submitted to the alternative measurement model. Amos 7.0 was used in testing the robustness and stability of the proposed model.

The results provide strong support for the stability and robustness of the alternative model. The multidimensional scale satisfies the minimum requirement of configural invariance and metric invariance.

The findings confirm that the multidimensional scale of brand trust can be meaningfully used in countries with distinct cultures. However, further testing may be needed given that the present study involves only two countries.

Overall brand trust is shown to be a function of consumers’ trust in specific aspects of a brand. Thus, it is imperative that brand managers make every effort to build consumers’ trust in performance competence and/or benevolent intention.

The present research demonstrates the robustness of the alternative measurement model of brand trust. It also exemplifies a way of testing a measurement model that involves a second-order construct and formative indicators.

In business and management, cross-national and cross-cultural comparisons between countries have been a topic of interest for many decades. Not only do firms engage in business in different countries around the world but also within countries. The population has become more diversified over time, making cross-cultural comparisons within country boundaries increasingly relevant. In comparisons across cultural groups, measurement invariance (MI) is a prerequisite; however, in practice, MI is not always attained or even tested. Our study consists of three parts. First, we provide a bibliometric analysis of articles on cross-cultural and cross-national topics in marketing to provide insight into the connections between the articles and the main themes. Second, we code articles to assess whether researchers follow the recommended steps as outlined in the multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) approach. The results indicate that MI testing is incorporated in the toolbox of many empirical researchers in marketing and that articles often report the level of invariance. Yet, most studies find partial invariance, meaning that some items are not comparable across the cultural groups studied. Researchers understand that MI is required, but they often ignore noninvariant items, which may decrease the validity of cross-cultural comparisons made. Third, we analyze the dissemination of MI in the broader literature based on co-citations with Steenkamp and Baumgartner (1998), a widely cited article on MI in the field of marketing. We conclude by noting methodological developments in cross-cultural research to enable addressing noninvariance and providing suggestions to further advance our insight into cross-cultural differences and similarities.

Economic globalization is leading large companies to focus on international strategic management. Nowadays, the assets referred to as “corporate intangibles,” such as corporate reputation, are becoming increasingly important because they are considered a key factor for the viability of an organization, and companies therefore need to incorporate them into their scorecards for management. The problem is that their measurement is subjective and latent. These two characteristics impede direct international comparison and require demonstrating the accuracy of comparison via a minimum of two tests – construct equivalence and metric equivalence. As regards corporate reputation, construct equivalence was verified by Naomi Gardberg (2006). However, the subsequent studies did not address metric equivalence. Based on the results of a survey provided by the Reputation Institute (n = 5,950, 50 firms evaluated in 17 countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia), the degree of RepTrak metric equivalence has been tested, using two different methodologies, multigroup analysis (structural equation model), and a new technique from 2016, the Measurement Invariance of Composite Model procedure from the Partial Least Square Path Modeling family. As one would expect from other cross-cultural studies, reputation metrics do not meet the full metric equivalence, which is why they require standardization processes to ensure international comparability. Both methodologies have identified the same correction parameters, which have allowed validation of the mean and variance of response style by country.

This study sets about assessing measurement invariance of the widely used CETSCALE in the context of an economically disadvantageous inland city in China. The 10-item CETSCALE (Shimp and Sharma 1987) was administered to a college-level student sample (male = 55 and female = 198) in Nanning City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. AMOS v. 20 was used to conduct confirmatory factor analysis and assess measurement invariance across gender.

This study is designed to assess measurement invariance of the 10-item CETSCALE with student sample in Nanning, the capital city of Guangxi, China.

The results support full metric invariance and factor variance invariance and partial scalar invariance and measurement residual invariance for the refined 5-item CETSCALE. It is found that college students in an economically underdeveloped multi-ethnic inland city like Nanning were less consumer ethnocentric than those in the affluent coastal cities.

This is the first study to assess measurement invariance of the CETSCALE with student sample from an economically underdeveloped multi-ethnic inland city in China.

This study aims at assessing item fairness in students' evaluation of teaching based on students' academic college using measurement invariance analysis (MI).

The sample of this study consists of 17,270 undergraduate students from 12 different academic colleges. SET survey consists of 20 Likert-type items distributed to four factors: planning, instruction, management and assessment was used to collect the data. The Lavaan R package with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to evaluate measurement invariance (MI). Four models of CFA were investigated and assessed: the configural model, the metric model, the scalar model and the residual invariance model. ANOVA was used to test the differences in SET according to academic colleges.

MI analysis showed that the four levels of MI models are supported. ANOVA test showed that means of SET total scores are statistically different according to students' academic colleges. College of “Education” has the highest SET mean (88.64 out of 100), and all the differences between the College of Education’s SET mean and other colleges' SET means are statistically significant.

The study recommends that higher education institutions test the MI of SET according to academic colleges and then use colleges with the highest SET at the university level as internal benchmarking to develop and enhance their teaching practices.

This study is probably the only study that tested MI according to students' colleges before testing the differences between colleges in SET. If MI is not supported, then the comparisons between academic colleges are not applicable.

This study uses second-order measurement invariance analysis to investigate the perspective of gender divide on whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) can serve as a promotional tool for halal certified companies in Malaysia. Perhaps researching into the perspective of gender on whether CSR can serve as a promotional tool has either been ignored or received limited attention among the researchers from this domain. Hence, this study aims to fill this gap.

In the quest to achieve the mentioned aim, quantitative research design was adopted for this study and the developed questionnaire was used to collect data from 295 respondents, consisting of 172 males and 123 females. In analysing the data, this study has mainly used second-order measurement invariance analysis to uncover the difference across gender divide on whether CSR can serve as a promotional tool for halal certified companies.

The findings of this study reveal two perspectives to the issue of interest in this study. The tests of measurement invariance at the model level suggest a significant difference between male and female to a certain extent. The post hoc test (at the path level) reveals that there are significant differences between gender divide with respect to responsible dealings with clients and legal responsibility only. However, there are insignificant differences between them in connection with commitment to halal best practices, zakat and charitable donations, environmental responsibility, halal economic responsibility and employee welfare. Nonetheless, both gender groups agree that CSR activities will promote halal certified companies if these activities are appropriately communicated to halal consumers.

The authors acknowledge that limitations cannot be avoided in any study, such as this study, where a nonprobability sampling technique is used. The respondents were largely drawn from Klang Valley in Malaysia; although Klang Valley’s population represents about a quarter of Malaysia’s total population, the authors admit that the opinions of the respondents may not represent the opinions of others in the country, and this may consequently limit the generalisability of the findings. Also, the authors acknowledge that self-report survey data is subject to response bias, which may reduce the accuracy of the data that were sourced from the respondents; though respondents were constantly reminded to respond honestly to all the questions in the questionnaire.

This study has uniquely employed second-order measurement invariance analysis to investigate the perspective of gender divide on whether CSR can serve as a promotional tool for halal certified companies in Malaysia. This study will enrich literature in this area of study.