Measurement invariance and quality of attitudes towards immigration in the European Social Survey

Nickel A. Measurement invariance and quality of attitudes towards immigration in the European Social Survey. Presented at the European Survey Research Association, Milan.While the European Social Survey (ESS) is one of the most widely used surveys for cross-national research on attitudes towards migration, only few studies have evaluated whether the used measurements are comparable across countries and over time. Those that did used different methods and analytic strategies which complicate the comparison of their results. To ensure comparability of results, we employ Multigroup Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MGCFA) and test for measurement invariance of attitudes towards immigration with the same approach in each round of the ESS. Our results reveal that metric invariance holds for all countries but one in all rounds, indicating that covariances and regression coefficients can be compared meaningfully. While scalar invariance only holds for different subgroups of countries within each round, partial invariance is fulfilled in all countries, meaning that at least one indicator is equal for all countries allowing for latent mean comparisons. Moreover, we estimate the measurement quality and find that the attitudes towards immigration index is similarly good across the different countries and rounds