Dear colleagues,

***** Sorry for cross-posting ********

we would like to draw attention to the CfP for our session "Achieving construct equivalence in cross-cultural research. Methodological challenges and innovative approaches" at the conference "Modes, Measurement, Modelling: Achieving Equivalence in Quantitative Research" in Mannheim, Germany (24.-25. October 2014) organized by Tobias Gummer and Henning Best on behalf of the ESC working group on "Quantitative Methods in Criminology" (EQMC) and the ESA Research Network on "Quantitative Methods" (ESA RN21). See http://www.gesis.org/en/events/conferences/modes-measurement-modelling/ for further information.

Below you find the details of our session. Please email your abstracts to wolfgang.aschauer@sbg.ac.at (session organizer) as well as cc to henning.best@gesis.org by 15 August 2014 at the latest.

Proposals should contain a title and an abstract of up to 200 words.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Aschauer & Martin Weichbold

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CfP Session

The main research aim of cross-national survey instruments (such as the European Social Survey, the ISSP or the World Value Survey) is to achieve comparable results and the key term to reach this goal is “equivalence”, more exactly: “functional equivalence”. Regarding certain aspects (e.g. sampling, survey modes, translation) considerable progress has been made during the last years but in certain central areas there is still a considerable need for further research.

One particular area is the challenge to achieve construct equivalence and to guarantee content validity of the major research themes in cross-cultural research. In many applied projects we can still observe the problematic strategy of an unchallenged use of Western-based approaches which claim universality. On the other hand several researchers already started to apply rather strict tests of equivalence (e.g. Multi Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MGCFA)) before conducting a cross- national analysis of survey data.

In the proposed session we aim to search for adequate methods to test for construct equivalence, to look for strategies to enhance content validity of certain (culturally sensitive) constructs and to discuss alternative and innovative approaches (in various research projects) of equivalence testing. Quantitative researchers who are active in those research fields are highly welcome to present methodological groundwork on the proposed issues or to present their own strategies to deal with construct equivalence in ongoing research projects.

Chairs: Wolfgang Aschauer & Martin Weichbold

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