Are personality measures valid for different populations? A systematic review of measurement invariance across cultures, gender, and age

By Yixiao Dong, Denis G. Dumas. 2020

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Abstract This article aims to systematically review and synthesize the existing literature that has tested at least one of three types of measurement invariance (MI) of a personality measure: cross-cultural/ethnic invariance, gender invariance, and age-group invariance. A literature search was conducted using PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, and PsycTESTS databases. The initial search yielded a total of 1,647 articles, and 95 studies derived from 75 peer-reviewed articles met all inclusion criteria. None of these studies achieved scalar or strict measurement invariance across cultural/ethnic groups, but many studies established scalar or strict invariance across gender (N = 13, 44.83%) or age (N = 10, 58.82%) groups. To further investigate patterns in this literature, an ordinal logistic regression revealed that age-group and gender invariance studies achieved significantly higher levels of invariance than cross-cultural MI studies, and confirmed that studies testing invariance across larger number of groups had significantly lower MI levels. Consequences and possible reasons for a lack of invariance, and suggestions for improving practices of investigating measurement invariance are discussed.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6190e4fbec5399c2ac0569a644be47e5a652f1fe