Comparing alignment and multiple group CFA for analysing political trust in europe during the crisis

Abstract

Institutional trust is in decline in many western democracies. Since the 2008 global economic and financial crisis, this increasing distrust has been closely related to trust in political institutions. Trust in institutions is one of the pillars of democracy, and its decline is one of the most evident and shared symptoms of the recession, especially in those contexts where it has been particularly acute. This article has both substantive and methodological aims. From a substantive point of view, it deals with trust in political institutions in Europe, and its decline during the recession. Differences are found among European countries, depending on the severity of the economic crisis. From a methodological point of view, the article compares two methodologies for cross-cultural analyses: the more traditional Multiple-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis, and the newer Alignment method. Recommendations for the use of the newer method in certain circumstances are provided.

Multigroup CFA and alignment approaches for testing measurement invariance and factor score estimation: Illustration with the schoolwork-related anxiety survey across countries and gender

“…Notably, the alignment method is one recently proposed approach to invariance testing in the presence of many groups and Muthén and Asparouhov (2018) compare and contrast the alignment method to a multilevel approach, which treats groups as random instead of fixed. As a new approach to invariance testing, there are unique areas of research to further understanding its methodological contribu tions to scale development and validation, as well as how it compares to other methods (e.g., Coromina, & Bartolomé Peral, 2020;Pokropek et al, 2019) and using different estimation procedures (e.g., Bayesian; .…”

“…For alignment optimization, a Monte Carlo study is used to examine the accuracy of factor means. The present study builds on the existing litera ture (e.g., Coromina & Bartolomé Peral, 2020;Munck et al, 2018) by comparing MGCFA and alignment optimization procedures for invariance testing and, correspondingly, the predictive validity of factor scores for mathematics achievement.…”

“…The alignment method ) is a procedure to estimate factor means and variances in the presence of noninvariant item parameters. This study builds on alignment research (e.g., Cieciuch, Davidov, & Schmidt, 2018;Lomazzi, 2018;Munck, Barber, & Torney-Purta, 2018), including its com parison with MGCFA (e.g., Coromina & Bartolomé Peral, 2020), by examining the MI of the schoolwork-related anxiety survey administered within the PISA 2015 study across gender groups within the 35 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (i.e., country by gender). Test anxiety is a key construct in education and has received much attention in the literature (e.g., Cizek & Burg, 2006), including cross-cultural research (Bodas & Ollendick, 2005).…”

Lp Loss Functions in Invariance Alignment and Haberman Linking with Few or Many Groups

“…As the IA approach is implemented in the popular Mplus software since its inclusion in Version 7.1 (May 2013; see [76]), it was already employed in a broad range of applications [40,75,[77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95]. The applications are most frequently found in the disciplines of education science, political science, psychology, and sociology.…”

$L_p$ Loss Functions in Invariance Alignment and Haberman Linking

“…The extension of IA to multidimensional factor models with continuous items was discussed in [63] and [64]. As the IA approach is implemented in the popular Mplus software, it was already employed in a broad range of applications [34,[64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83].…”