Come si verifica l'invarianza cross-culturale degli strumenti: Un esempio nell'ambito degli studi sulla famiglia (How to test for cross-cultural invariance: An example from family studies)

An emerging issue in cross-cultural research methodology concerns how to test the invariance of measuring instruments used. Item bias refers to a systematic difference in the interpretation of scale items in different groups. In this study, we present a method for the analysis of item bias developed by van de Vijver and Leung (1997). The method uses Analysis of Variance to identify items showing uniform and nonuniform bias. We illustrate this procedure using a study into famiy processes in Italy and Great Britain. We analysed the cross-cultural invariance of the items of a scale of family enmeshment (Bloom, 1985). The presence of bias in various items shows important implications for the definition of enmeshment in countries with different family cultures