A Central Question in Cross-Cultural Research: Do Employees of Different Cultures Interpret Work-related Measures in an Equivalent Manner?

TLDR

The study employs covariance‑structure analysis to evaluate the stability and transferability of organizational measures across cultural groups. The findings demonstrate that without establishing measurement equivalence, culturally diverse groups interpret items differently—using distinct conceptual frames and score calibrations—but once these differences are identified and adjusted for, latent mean differences can be meaningfully compared, highlighting the value of the proposed approach.

Abstract

Within the present research, a covariance structure analytic procedure is applied to test the stability and transferability of organizational measures between groups in cross-cultural research. Findings support the need to establish the equivalency of constructs and measures prior to interpreting differences in means of self-report variables between culturally diverse groups. Indeed, for two measures, the cultural groups were using different conceptual frames of reference when responding to the items. For a third measure, the groups were calibrating the true scores differently. However, the source of the calibration difference was identified and subsequently accounted for in later analyses. Thus, differences between latent means for the culturally diverse groups were calculated and interpreted. The approach outlined in this paper is proffered as yielding valuable insights regarding the appropriateness of comparative cross-cultural studies.