Towards Gender Harmony Dataset: Gender Beliefs and Gender Stereotypes in 62 Countries

The Towards Gender Harmony (TGH) project began in September 2018 with over 160 scholars who formed an international consortium to collect data from 62 countries across six continents. Our overarching goal was to analyze contemporary perceptions of masculinity and femininity using quantitative and qualitative methods, marking a groundbreaking effort in social science research. The data collection took place between January 2018 and February 2020, and involved undergraduate students who completed a series of randomized scales and the data was collected through the SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics platforms, with paper surveys being used in rare cases. All the measures used in the project were translated into 22 languages. The dataset contains 33,313 observations and 286 variables, including contemporary measures of gendered self-views, attitudes, and stereotypes, as well as relevant demographic data. The TGH dataset, linked with accessible country-level data, provides valuable insights into the dynamics of gender relations worldwide, allowing for multilevel analyses and examination of how gendered self-views and attitudes are linked to behavioral intentions and demographic variables.

Emotional Intelligence as a Personality State

Abstract. Contemporary research has begun to explore the notion that emotional intelligence (EI) has an important state component in addition to the trait component, as represented in the whole trait theory. This implies that state EI (or enacted EI) has similar cognitive, affective, and motivational contents as its corresponding trait. The question, however, of whether a trait EI construct means the same across the individual (trait) and state levels of analysis has not been empirically investigated. To address this gap, the present study examines the assessment of enacted EI, using the full version of the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS) on both between-person and within-person levels of analysis. Participants were 493 Greek employees who completed the WLEIS for 5 consecutive workdays. Multilevel confirmatory factor analyses confirmed that the original four-factor multilevel model appeared to best fit the data. Multilevel measurement invariance analysis supported the equivalence of the measure across different levels of analysis. In conclusion, the WLEIS is a configural cluster construct, believed to be a valuable and reliable tool for assessing enacted EI within the workplace. Implications for future research on enacted EI are discussed.

Reviewer Resources: Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) are widely used in the organizational literature. As a result, understanding how to properly conduct these analyses, report the results, and interpret their implications is critically important for advancing organizational research. The goal of this paper is to summarize the complexities of CFA models and, therefore, to provide a resource for journal reviewers and researchers who are using CFA in their research. The topics covered in this paper include the estimation process, power analyses, model fit, and model modifications, among other things. In addition, this paper concludes with a checklist that summarizes the key points that are discussed and can be used to evaluate future studies that incorporate CFA.

Construct Development and Validation in Three Practical Steps: Recommendations for Reviewers, Editors, and Authors*

We review contemporary best practice for developing and validating measures of constructs in the organizational sciences. The three basic steps in scale development are: (a) construct definition, (b) choosing operationalizations that match the construct definition, and (c) obtaining empirical evidence to confirm construct validity. While summarizing this 3-step process [i.e., Define-Operationalize-Confirm], we address many issues in establishing construct validity and provide a checklist for journal reviewers and authors when evaluating the validity of measures used in organizational research. Among other points, we pay special attention to construct conceptualization, acknowledging existing constructs, improving existing measures, multidimensional constructs, macro-level constructs, and the need for independent samples to confirm construct validity and measurement equivalence across subpopulations.

Ecological Momentary Assessment of Creative Ideation

Abstract. Creative ideas in daily life show substantial variation in quality. Yet, most studies investigate the creative ideation process in highly controlled laboratory contexts, which challenges the ecological validity of creativity research findings. In this article, we advocate the use of ambulatory assessments of creative ideation to gain deeper insight into the variability of ideation processes (between- and within-subjects) in everyday life. We demonstrate this approach by the example of the ambulatory battery of creativity (ABC), which constitutes a reliable and valid approach to assess divergent thinking ability in the verbal and figural domain in everyday life context. Furthermore, it differentiates between-person and within-person variation of creative ideation performance. The first part of this paper will shortly describe the general approach using ABC as an example. In the second part, we use the 7 C’s heuristic to explore applications and implications of this novel method for creativity research. We focus on four C’s with special relevance for ambulatory assessment: Creator, Creating, Context, and Curricula. To this end, we review the findings of strongly controlled laboratory studies and discuss and illustrate applications of the ambulatory assessment. We conclude that the assessment of creative ideation performance in the field might help move the spotlight of creative ideation research from the laboratory to more naturalistic settings. This would increase the ecological validity of creative ideation research and facilitate fresh or unprecedented perspectives on past and future questions on a person’s creative potential and its moment-to-moment fluctuation.

Conducting and Evaluating Multilevel Studies: Recommendations, Resources, and a Checklist

Multilevel methods allow researchers to investigate relationships that expand across levels (e.g., individuals, teams, and organizations). The popularity of these methods for studying organizational phenomena has increased in recent decades. Methodologists have examined how these methods work under different conditions, providing an empirical base for making sound decisions when using these methods. In this article, we provide recommendations, tools, resources, and a checklist that can be useful for scholars involved in conducting or assessing multilevel studies. The focus of our article is on two-level designs, in which Level-1 entities are neatly nested within Level-2 entities, and top-down effects are estimated. However, some of our recommendations are also applicable to more complex multilevel designs.

A Review of Measurement Equivalence in Organizational Research: What's Old, What's New, What's Next?

The study of measurement equivalence has important implications for organizational research. Nonequivalence across groups or over time can affect the results of a study and the conclusions that are drawn from it. As a result, the review paper by Vandenberg & Lance (2000) has been highly cited and has played an important role in understanding the measurement of organizational constructs. However, that paper is now 20 years old, and a number of advances have been made in the application and interpretation of measurement equivalence (ME) since its publication. Therefore, the goal of the present paper is to provide an updated review of ME techniques that describes recent advances in testing for ME and proposes a taxonomy of potential sources of nonequivalence. Finally, we articulate recommendations for applying these newer methods and consider future directions for measurement equivalence research in the organizational literature.

Within- and between-person factor structure of the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory: Analysis of a diary study using multilevel confirmatory factor analysis

The study examined the factor structure of burnout, as measured with the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory. The participants were 235 employees of a public administration agency who assessed their burnout online for 10 consecutive working days. Two models were tested with multilevel confirmatory factor analysis, assuming the same one or two-factor structure at the within- and between-person levels. Both models showed a reasonable fit to the data, but due to a strong correlation between exhaustion and disengagement and low within-person reliability for disengagement, a unidimensional model seems more valid. A cross-level invariance was not confirmed for either of the structures, showing that factor loadings for the same items differ significantly between the levels. This suggests that burnout is not the same latent variable at each level; rather, there are factors other than daily burnout that influence person-level scores and ignoring these across-level discrepancies may lead to biased conclusions.

Developments in the HRM–Performance Research stream: The mediation studies

Testing Human Resource Management (HRM)’s effect on organisational performance has been a core part of HRM research over the past 25 years. Whereas pioneering studies in the field neglected the mechanisms explaining this relationship, treating it as a ‘black box’, in the last decade the focus has been on examining the mediators of this relationship. Most recently, a series of reviews has been more critical of the field, particularly highlighting its diversity and underplaying of employee involvement, a concern central to its inception. This paper assesses these mediation studies in the light of these concerns, which provide criteria by which I summarise them and assess the extent to which they have advanced the field. The analysis demonstrates that the main problems of the black-box studies remain: the misalignment of the use of additive indexes and the theory of synergistic relationships, confusion over analysis methods, inadequate justification of the selection of practices in the empirical investigations, and under-representation of employee involvement. The researchers continue to present the field as a unified one. However, since the majority of studies are centred on high-performance work systems, there is a clear schism across them between these studies and those centred on high-involvement management. The paper reinforces the importance of this distinction, on the basis that a high-performance work system is a technology, a set of sophisticated personnel practices, whereas high-involvement management is a managerial philosophy or orientation towards fostering employee involvement. The paper concludes by suggesting ways of overcoming the recurring problems in HRM–performance research, and how these vary between the two perspectives.

Is the DLOQ learning-oriented leadership isomorphic? Learning-oriented leadership mediates hierarchical teams’ learning dimensions

Purpose

Learning organizations are often theorized at a team level, yet there is a lack of team-level studies. This study aims to evaluate if team-level dimensions of a learning organizational questionnaire (DLOQ) measures are reliable and reflect real team properties and if both individual-level and team-level DLOQ leadership mediates the effect of rank on other DLOQ measures.

Design/methodology/approach

An empirical analysis evaluated if team-level DLOQ measures are reliable and reflected real team properties and if DLOQ learning-oriented leadership mediates the effect of rank or team hierarchy on all other DLOQ measures. A novel approach (random group resampling) was used to evaluate if team level measures reflected either a real team property or a statistical artifact. Next, a series of mediation models evaluated if learning-oriented leadership was isomorphic, namely, displays a similar pattern at both individual and team levels.

Findings

The analysis found team-level DLOQ measures reflected real properties of the teams and were reliable and learning-oriented leadership mediates between rank and team hierarchy and the other six dimensions at both individual and team-levels (i.e. DLOQ team and individual level were isomorphic).

Practical implications

The results show that hierarchical teams’ learning capacities can be improved by focusing on the learning-oriented leadership, which overcomes the typically negative effect of hierarchical differences within teams.

Originality/value

This study provides a significant step forward by applying an innovative analysis that shows that the DLOQ team level measures reflect real team properties and DLOQ leadership displays isomorphic characteristics.

Attitudes Toward Asylum Policy in a Divided Europe: Diverging Contexts, Diverging Attitudes?

The large inflow of asylum-seekers in recent years has heralded a diversification in adopted asylum policies across European societies. Although a growing body of research has addressed these versatile approaches and their implications for the European integration project, insight into the social basis of these restrictive or open asylum policies remains underdeveloped. Hence, the current study provides detailed insight into public preferences for asylum policies and offers a new understanding of how these attitudes are affected by diverging socio-economic realities across Europe. In addition, this paper considers the role of individual factors that coincide with publicly adopted frames in contemporary asylum debates. In particular, to explain how contextual differences reflect on opinion climates, the impacts of the policy, economic, and migratory context are studied. On the individual-level, we focus on threat perception and human values, which represent humanitarian, economic, and cultural frames. To explore these relations, data on 20 countries from the European Social Survey Round 8 (2016) are analyzed through a multilevel structural equation modeling approach. Results indicate that, on the contextual-level, only unemployment rates have a significant impact and, rather surprisingly, lower unemployment rates provoke a more negative opinion climate. Yet, this relationship seems to be largely driven by some specific countries that are characterized by large unemployment rates and relatively positive opinion climates simultaneously. The migratory and policy context, on the other hand, do not influence attitudes toward asylum policy. This indicates that it is not necessarily the countries facing the largest inflow of asylum-seekers or issuing the most positive decisions on asylum applications that have the most restrictive opinion climates. As shown by the important roles of human values and threat perceptions, which represent widely adopted frames, public discourses seem much more important in explaining attitudes toward asylum policy across Europe.

Assessing the Risk of Stress in Organizations: Getting the Measure of Organizational-Level Stressors

Great Britain's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) developed the Management Standards Indicator Tool to help organizations to assess and monitor organizational risks of work-related stress through surveying employees about the psychosocial risks for stress in their jobs. The use of employee-level data for deriving an organizational-level measure of psychosocial risks assumes that the constructs have equivalent meanings at different levels. However, this isomorphic condition has never been tested and this study fills this gap. Using data collected by the Italian Workers' Compensation Authority (INAIL) from 66,188 employees nested in 775 organizations, we demonstrate that the organizational-level measure representing the seven dimensions of the Management Standards Indicator Tool is equivalent, though not identical, to the individual-level measure. This implies that the organizational level is not a mirror of the aggregation of the individual level, and that the risk of work-related stress in an organization may derive not simply from bottom-up processes, but may be generated by top-down influences (e.g., organizational policies). Interventions may then be meaningfully targeted at the organizational level in the expectation that they will reduce the risk of work-related stress among the entire workforce, the valid measurement of which can be performed through the HSE's Management Standards Indicator Tool.

Using cultural and structural indicators to explain measurement noninvariance in gender role attitudes with multilevel structural equation modeling

The current study explores the reasons for noninvariance of the measurements of gender role attitudes across countries. While previous studies have shown that noninvariance is a problem for comparative research and pointed out methods to alleviate the risks of drawing invalid conclusions, none has so far tried to explain why measurements of gender role attitudes are nonequivalent. Therefore, we use multilevel structural equation modeling to exploring measurement invariance and explain its absence. We use data assessing peoples' views on the specialization of roles by gender and the consequences of female employment on family's well-being from the International Social Survey Programme. We can replicate the findings from prior research indicating that scalar measurement invariance across countries is absent. Furthermore, we use two country-level variables to explain the noninvariance of particular items. The cultural value embeddedness explains noninvariance to a considerable degree while the Gender Inequality Index from the United Nations Development Programme does not. Therefore, we conclude that issues of comparability of gender role attitudes are related mainly to cultural rather than structural differences between countries.

Learning organizational ambidexterity

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to reexamine exploration-exploitation’s reciprocality in organizational ambidexterity (OA) research. OA figures prominently in a variety of organization science phenomena. Introduced as a two-stage model for innovation, theory specifies reciprocal reinforcement between the OA processes of exploration (eR) and exploitation (eT). In this study, the authors argue that previous analyses of OA necessarily neglect this reciprocality in favor of conceptualizations that conform to common statistical techniques.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors propose joint-variance (JV) as a soluble estimator of exploration–exploitation (eR-eT) reciprocality. An updated systematic literature synthesis yielded K = 50 studies (53 independent samples, N = 11,743) for further testing.

Findings

Three primary findings are as follows: JV reduced negative confounding, explaining 45 per cent of between-study variance. JV quantified the positive confounding in separate meta-analytic estimates of eR and eT on performance because of double-counting (37.6 per cent), and substantive application of JV to hypothesis testing supported OA theoretical predictions.

Research limitations/implications

The authors discuss practical consideration for eR-eT reciprocality, as well as theoretical contributions for cohering the OA empirical literature.

Practical implications

The authors discuss design limitations and JV measurement extensions for the future.

Social implications

Learning in OA literature has been neglected or underestimated.

Originality/value

Because reciprocality is theorized, yet absent in current models, existing results represent confounded or biased evidence of the OA’s effect on firm performance. Subsequently, the authors propose JV as a soluble estimator of eR-eT learning modes.

Assessing Objective and Verifiable Indicators Associated With Work-Related Stress: Validation of a Structured Checklist for the Assessment and Management of Work-Related Stress

Risk assessment represents an essential part of any successful intervention in health and safety at work. The most prominent European methodologies propose multi-method approaches for identifying the risks associated with work-related stress. Nevertheless, the most widely used method is the self-administered questionnaire. By adapting the UK Management Standards approach, the Italian National Workers Compensation Authority (INAIL) developed a checklist for the assessment of objective and verifiable indicators of work-related stress. This checklist is filled in by a steering group composed of homogenous groups of workers. Through a web-platform developed by INAIL, a considerable amount of data over the last 5 years has been collected throughout Italy. The aims of this study are to examine the psychometric properties as well as the practical validity of the checklist in a wide sample of Italian companies. The sample comprised 5,301 homogeneous groups of workers nested within 1,631 organizations. The checklist measures two main areas: (1) the organizational indicators of work-related stress (sentinel events) and (2) four and six factors related respectively to content and context of work. Multilevel and multivariate analyses revealed that the checklist shows adequate factor structure and criterion validity. Results also demonstrate that small companies and the public and healthcare sector show higher risk levels. These results support the use of the checklist as a structured and generalizable tool for assessing and monitoring the risks associated with work-related stress.

Experience Sampling Methods: A Discussion of Critical Trends and Considerations for Scholarly Advancement

In the organizational sciences, scholars are increasingly using experience sampling methods (ESM) to answer questions tied to intraindividual, dynamic phenomenon. However, employing this method to answer organizational research questions comes with a number of complex—and often difficult—decisions surrounding: (1) how the implementation of ESM can advance or elucidate prior between-person theorizing at the within-person level of analysis, (2) how scholars should effectively and efficiently assess within-person constructs, and (3) analytic concerns regarding the proper modeling of interdependent assessments and trends while controlling for potentially confounding factors. The current paper addresses these challenges via a panel of seven researchers who are familiar not only with implementing this methodology but also related theoretical and analytic challenges in this domain. The current paper provides timely, actionable insights aimed toward addressing several complex issues that scholars often face when implementing ESM in their research.

A test of construct isomorphism of the Belief in a Zero-Sum Game scale: A multilevel 43-nation study

BACKGROUND

We examined the equivalence of the individual and the country-level factor structure of the Belief in a Zero-Sum Game (BZSG) scale, a tool designed to measure antagonistic beliefs about social relations (i.e., perceived social antagonism) in the struggle for limited resources.

AIMS

In this article we focused on a test of construct isomorphism in a multilevel modeling approach. It was hypothesized that the BZSG measure satisfies all requirements for a strong level of configural isomorphism, and thus that it is useful to investigate BZSG at both the individual and the country levels. The relationships between the BZSG at a country level with other macro-socio-economic indicators were also investigated.

METHOD

Multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (MCFA) was carried out on a cross-country sample composed of 11,368 participants from 43 different countries. We also used the country-level latent BZSG factor in each country as an indicator of a property that we attributed to a particular culture: cultural dimension (collectivism-individualism), macroeconomic indicators (GDP per capita and GNI per capita) and macrosocial indicators (Human Development Index and Democracy Index) describing societies.

RESULTS

The results revealed an isomorphic factor structure of perceived social antagonism (measured by BZSG scale), defined in terms of the equivalence factor structure at the both individual and country levels. Furthermore, the relationship between the perceived social antagonism, gross national income per capita, and collectivism were confirmed.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study supports the usefulness of the BZSG scale for cross-cultural comparison, in the case of its isomorphic structure. At the country level, antagonistic beliefs emerge in hierarchical collectivist societies with lower income. The main contribution of this article is the presentation of the test of construct isomorphism. We made an effort to present a full perspective on construct isomorphism putting together two different but very recent approaches.

Contextual Undertow of Workplace Deviance by and Within Units: A Systematic Review

Within the constellation of employee misconduct, workplace deviance possesses the somewhat distinctive feature of violating organizational norms. Yet, the burgeoning research examining the social context surrounding workplace deviance typically fails to properly account for it. Interdisciplinary research has demonstrated that within organizations (a) multiple reference groups provide descriptive and injunctive norms about (in)appropriate behavior; (b) even when embedded within the organizational hierarchy, norms are not necessarily consistent across these groups; and (c) the immediate reference group often exerts a crucial influence. Against this background, we discuss prevalent conceptualizations of workplace deviance and systematically review the literature from 1995 to 2017. We present our findings according to external and organizational, leadership, and intraunit antecedents of workplace deviance by and within units, distinguishing, in particular, unit composition, processes and emergent states, climates, and norms. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and methodological avenues for future research.

Dimensions of Entrepreneurial Success: A Multilevel Study on Stakeholders of Micro-Enterprises

The study provides an insight into the indicators and dimensions of entrepreneurial success as evaluated from the external stockholders' perspective. As each firm is embedded in a network of relations with stakeholders (business partners), understanding how they evaluate entrepreneurial success is important. The initial qualitative study in the form of in-depth interviews allowed us to identify the indicators of entrepreneurial success that are identified by external stakeholders of micro-firms. In the quantitative study on 475 stakeholders of 57 micro-firms, we identified the dimensions of entrepreneurial success. Using a multilevel approach, we found six dimensions of entrepreneurial success at the individual stakeholder level and four dimensions at the firm level. The results show that stakeholders perceive entrepreneurial success in terms of many dimensions, not focusing solely on economic indicators. This knowledge may inform micro-firm management and the strategies employed by practitioners supporting entrepreneurs.

Reconsidering Cluster Bias in Multilevel Data: A Monte Carlo Comparison of Free and Constrained Baseline Approaches

The test for item level cluster bias examines the improvement in model fit that results from freeing an item's between level residual variance from a baseline model with equal within and between level factor loadings and between level residual variances fixed at zero. A potential problem is that this approach may include a misspecified unrestricted model if any non-invariance is present, but the log-likelihood difference test requires that the unrestricted model is correctly specified. A free baseline approach where the unrestricted model includes only the restrictions needed for model identification should lead to better decision accuracy, but no studies have examined this yet. We ran a Monte Carlo study to investigate this issue. When the referent item is unbiased, compared to the free baseline approach, the constrained baseline approach led to similar true positive (power) rates but much higher false positive (Type I error) rates. The free baseline approach should be preferred when the referent indicator is unbiased. When the referent assumption is violated, the false positive rate was unacceptably high for both free and constrained baseline approaches, and the true positive rate was poor regardless of whether the free or constrained baseline approach was used. Neither the free or constrained baseline approach can be recommended when the referent indicator is biased. We recommend paying close attention to ensuring the referent indicator is unbiased in tests of cluster bias. All Mplus input and output files, R, and short Python scripts used to execute this simulation study are uploaded to an open access repository.

Relating Measurement Invariance, Cross-Level Invariance, and Multilevel Reliability

Data often have a nested, multilevel structure, for example when data are collected from children in classrooms. This kind of data complicate the evaluation of reliability and measurement invariance, because several properties can be evaluated at both the individual level and the cluster level, as well as across levels. For example, cross-level invariance implies equal factor loadings across levels, which is needed to give latent variables at the two levels a similar interpretation. Reliability at a specific level refers to the ratio of true score variance over total variance at that level. This paper aims to shine light on the relation between reliability, cross-level invariance, and strong factorial invariance across clusters in multilevel data. Specifically, we will illustrate how strong factorial invariance across clusters implies cross-level invariance and perfect reliability at the between level in multilevel factor models.

Testing and Explaining Differences in Common and Residual Factors Across Many Countries

To make valid comparisons across countries, a measurement instrument needs to be measurement invariant across countries. The present article provides a nontechnical exposition of a recently proposed multilevel factor analysis approach to test measurement invariance across countries. It is explained that strong factorial invariance across countries implies equal factor loadings across levels and zero residual variance at the country level in a two-level factor model. Using two-level factor analysis, the decomposition of the variance at each level can be investigated, measurement invariance can be tested, and country-level variables can be added to explain differences in the common or residual factors. The approach is illustrated using two examples. The first example features data about well-being from the European Social Survey and the second example uses data about mathematical ability from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. The input-files and annotated output-files for both examples are provided in the supplementary files.

Examining Variability in Values Attributed to Culture

Prior work examining the role of cultural groupings (i.e., national membership) on personal values showed small to moderate amounts of variability attributable to culture, refuting the idea that culture determines values. We extend this research by examining the proportion of variance in values that could be explained by cultural membership. Because there is no definitive level of proportion of variance that would lead to a conclusion that values are culturally determined, personality, which is arguably not culturally determined, was used as a relative benchmark. Language groups were used as an alternate conception of cultural groupings. A large data set of 144,857 workers from across 31 major language groups revealed that language groups explained a significant and non-negligible amount of variance in personal value dimensions (7%-17%). Nevertheless, this was not significantly larger than any single personality dimension (3%-12%). In other words, our data failed to support the notion that personal values are strongly determined by cultural groupings compared with personality.

Development, validation, and performance of a scale to measure community mobilization

RATIONALE

Community mobilization approaches (CMAs) are increasingly becoming key components of health programming. However, CMAs have been ill defined and poorly evaluated, largely due to the lack of measurement tools to assess mobilization processes and impact.

OBJECTIVE

We developed the Community Mobilization Measure (CMM), composed of a set of scales to measure mobilization domains hypothesized to operate at the community-level. The six domains include: shared concerns, critical consciousness, leadership, collective action, social cohesion, and organizations and networks. We also included the domain of social control to explore synergies with the related construct of collective efficacy.

METHOD

A survey instrument was developed and pilot tested, then revised and administered to 1181 young people, aged 18-35, in a community-based survey in rural South Africa. Item response modeling and exploratory factor analyses were conducted to assess model fit, dimensionality, reliability, and validity.

RESULTS

Results indicate the seven-dimensional model, with linked domains but no higher order construct, fit the data best. Internal consistency reliability of the factors was strong, with ρ values ranging from 0.81 to 0.93. Six of seven scales were sufficiently correlated to represent linked concepts that comprise community mobilization; social control was less related to the other components. At the village level, CMM sub-scales were correlated with other metrics of village social capital and integrity, providing initial evidence of higher-level validity, however additional evaluation of the measure at the community-level is needed.

CONCLUSION

This is the first effort to develop and validate a comprehensive measure for community mobilization. The CMM was designed as an evaluation tool for health programming and should facilitate a more nuanced understanding of mechanisms of change associated with CM, ultimately making mobilizing approaches more effective.

The Importance of Isomorphism for Conclusions about Homology: A Bayesian Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling Approach with Ordinal Indicators

We describe a Monte Carlo study examining the impact of assuming item isomorphism (i.e., equivalent construct meaning across levels of analysis) on conclusions about homology (i.e., equivalent structural relations across levels of analysis) under varying degrees of non-isomorphism in the context of ordinal indicator multilevel structural equation models (MSEMs). We focus on the condition where one or more loadings are higher on the between level than on the within level to show that while much past research on homology has ignored the issue of psychometric isomorphism, psychometric isomorphism is in fact critical to valid conclusions about homology. More specifically, when a measurement model with non-isomorphic items occupies an exogenous position in a multilevel structural model and the non-isomorphism of these items is not modeled, the within level exogenous latent variance is under-estimated leading to over-estimation of the within level structural coefficient, while the between level exogenous latent variance is overestimated leading to underestimation of the between structural coefficient. When a measurement model with non-isomorphic items occupies an endogenous position in a multilevel structural model and the non-isomorphism of these items is not modeled, the endogenous within level latent variance is under-estimated leading to under-estimation of the within level structural coefficient while the endogenous between level latent variance is over-estimated leading to over-estimation of the between level structural coefficient. The innovative aspect of this article is demonstrating that even minor violations of psychometric isomorphism render claims of homology untenable. We also show that posterior predictive p-values for ordinal indicator Bayesian MSEMs are insensitive to violations of isomorphism even when they lead to severely biased within and between level structural parameters. We highlight conditions where poor estimation of even correctly specified models rules out empirical examination of isomorphism and homology without taking precautions, for instance, larger Level-2 sample sizes, or using informative priors.

An Overview and Practical Guide to IRT Measurement Equivalence Analysis

This article provides an overview and guide to implementing item response theory (IRT) measurement equivalence (ME) or differential item functioning (DIF) analysis. We (a) present the need for establishing IRT ME/DIF analysis, (b) discuss the similarities and differences between factor-analytic ME/DIF analysis, (c) review commonly used IRT ME/DIF indices and procedures, (d) provide three illustrations to two recommended IRT procedures, and (e) furnish recommendations for conducting IRT ME/DIF. We conclude by discussing future directions for IRT ME/DIF research.

The Workgroup Emotional Climate Scale

This article reports two studies aimed at developing a theory-based multidimensional measure of workgroup emotional climate (WEC) and exploring its relationship with workgroup effectiveness. In Study 1, a four-factor theory of WEC is derived from a review of the climate and emotions literature, followed by the use of both qualitative and quantitative methods to operationalize the model and develop a survey measure. An initial sample of 396 workgroup members provided the data for the exploratory factor analysis and item response theory analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of data from another sample of 334 workgroup members further confirmed the proposed structure. In Study 2, multilevel CFA of data collected from 840 workgroup members from 148 workgroups provided construct, consensual, and discriminant validity. We also examined the relationship between WEC and workgroup effectiveness. The resulting four-factor, 16-item measure demonstrated robust psychometric properties, with acceptable levels of reliability and validity.