Can the left-right scale travel? A note on the comparability of its use in Europe and across generations in East and West Germany

Subjective variables such as opinions, attitudes or preferences cannot be measured directly. Researchers have to rely on the answers people give in surveys, and whenever those answers shall be compared it is required that people answer these questions in the same way. Only then a concept can be used in different contexts. In this paper we study the use of the leftright response scale in European countries and among age cohorts in East and West Germany. Following the three steps of invariance testing, configural, metric and scalar invariance, we find that the left-right response scale is indeed used in the same way in different age cohort in East and West Germany but not overall in 25 selected European countries. In order to estimate how serious these differences are we compare observed and latent means, and the effect of the observed variable “attitude towards government’s intervention in the economy” on the observed variable “left-right self-placement” with the effect between these variables after correcting for scale difference. It was found that countries’ means can be compared but that the relationship with other variables might not be comparable among Finland, France and Germany and the remaining countries