Measurement invariance

Measurement invariance or measurement equivalence is a statistical property of measurement that indicates that the same construct is being measured across some specified groups. For example, measurement invariance can be used to study whether a given measure is interpreted in a conceptually similar manner by respondents representing different genders or cultural backgrounds. Violations of measurement invariance may preclude meaningful interpretation of measurement data. Tests of measurement invariance are increasingly used in fields such as psychology to supplement evaluation of measurement quality rooted in classical test theory. Measurement invariance or measurement equivalence is a statistical property of measurement that indicates that the same construct is being measured across some specified groups. For example, measurement invariance can be used to study whether a given measure is interpreted in a conceptually similar manner by respondents representing different genders or cultural backgrounds. Violations of measurement invariance may preclude meaningful interpretation of measurement data. Tests of measurement invariance are increasingly used in fields such as psychology to supplement evaluation of measurement quality rooted in classical test theory. Measurement invariance is often tested in the framework of multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In the context of structural equation models, including CFA, measurement invariance is often termed factorial invariance. In the common factor model, measurement invariance may be defined as the following equality: where f ( ⋅ ) {displaystyle f(cdot )} is a distribution function, Y {displaystyle { extit {Y}}} is an observed score, η {displaystyle {oldsymbol {eta }}} is a factor score, and s denotes group membership (e.g., Caucasian=0, African American=1). Therefore, measurement invariance entails that given a subject's factor score, his or her observed score is not dependent on his or her group membership. Several different types of measurement invariance can be distinguished in the common factor model for continuous outcomes: