engleski

Emotional Skills and Competence Questionnaire in cross-cultural studies

The main goal of cross-cultural studies is comparison of constructs and scores between various countries. Early studies had common methodological problems, for example cross- cultural similarities and differences were often visually (and not statistically) tested, lack of rationale for selecting countries, no check on quality of translation/ adaptation, results are often generalized to large populations (e.g. complete populations of countries) although no probability sampling has been employed to recruit participants, etc. Application of assessment methods to different languages and cultural backgrounds, without taking in account these problems, can result in questionable cultural comparability. Since we are not sure in cross- cultural meaning of constructs, the validity and the interpretation of measures needs to be done with caution. Researchers should give specific attention to structural equivalence and metric invariance of measures. Measurement invariance is related to the degree to which items and constructs have an equivalent meaning for individuals of different cultural backgrounds. Analysis of item bias or differential item functioning (DIF) should be done on the item level. Statistical techniques for evaluating DIF items allow us to compare any groups defined by the researcher in order to secure that the members of the compared groups have the same probability of answering the items correctly if they have the same level of latent variable. Emotional Skills and Competence Questionnaire (ESCQ) has been translated and validated in several languages, and had shown good psychometric properties. Results from these studies will be presented with special attention given to problems of DIF items and different statistical approaches for their detection. Future development of cross-cultural testing should benefit from increasing use of international tests and testing ; new psychometric models and new technologies ; new item formats and multi-media functions ; and higher demand of courses and training in the psychometric field.

cross-cultural studies, ESCQ, metric invariance, DIF

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