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Differences in societal views on the roles of men and women have been addressed in many large-scale comparative studies by employing indicators of gender roles attitudes from cross-sectional surveys. Assuming that cross-country differences in gender role attitudes are linked to the prevailing cultural value orientations in each society, this study aims at investigating the association between societal views on gender roles, as measured by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), and the prevailing cultural values, as defined by Schwartz’s theory. However, to carry out meaningful comparisons, we first assessed the prerequisite of measurement equivalence between countries. The comparability of gender role attitudes is limited when using traditional methods based on the concept of exact equivalence (multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis). However, the recently established alignment optimization procedure reveals approximate measurement equivalence and suggests that the mean comparison is trustworthy. Based on these results, we correlate the national mean levels of gender role attitudes with the cultural values of embeddedness, hierarchy and egalitarianism, showing that traditional gender roles are displayed in societies emphasizing hierarchy and embeddedness while progressive views are more expressed in egalitarian societies.

Although measurement invariance is widely considered a precondition for meaningful cross-sectional comparisons, substantive studies have often neglected evaluating this assumption, thereby risking drawing conclusions and making theoretical generalizations based on misleading results. This study offers a theoretical overview of the key issues concerning the measurement and the comparison of socio-political values and aims to answer the questions of what must be evaluated, why, when, and how to assess measurement equivalence. This paper discusses the implications of formative and reflective approaches to the measurement of socio-political values and introduces challenges in their comparison across different countries. From this perspective, exact and approximate approaches to equivalence are described as well as their empirical translation in statistical techniques, such as the multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) and the frequentist alignment method. To illustrate the application of these methods, the study investigates the construct of solidarity as measured by European Values Study (EVS) and using data collected in 34 countries in the last wave of the EVS (2017–2020). The concept is captured through a battery of nine items reflecting three dimensions of solidarity: social, local, and global. Two measurement models are hypothesized: a first-order factor model, in which the three independent dimensions of solidarity are correlated, and a second-order factor model, in which solidarity is conceived according to a hierarchical principle, and the construct of solidarity is reflected in the three sub-factors. In testing the equivalence of the first-order factor model, the results of the MGCFA indicated that metric invariance was achieved. The alignment method supported approximate equivalence only when the model was reduced to two factors, excluding global solidarity. The second-order factor model fit the data of only seven countries, in which this model could

The European Values Study (EVS) was first conducted in 1981 and then repeated in 1990, 1999, 2008, and 2017, with the aim of providing researchers with data to investigate whether European individual and social values are changing and to what degree. The EVS is traditionally carried out as a probability-based face-to-face survey that takes around 1 hour to complete. In recent years, large-scale population surveys such as the EVS have been challenged by decreasing response rates and increasing survey costs. In the light of these challenges, six countries that participated in the last wave of the EVS tested the application of self-administered mixed-modes (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Switzerland). With the present data brief, we will introduce researchers to the latest wave of the EVS, the implemented mode experiments, and the EVS data releases. In our view, it is pivotal for data use in substantive research to make the reasoning behind design changes and country-specific implementations transparent as well as to highlight new research opportunities.

The measurement of gender role attitudes has been found to be problematic in previous studies, especially in comparative perspective. The present study adopts a novel approach and investigates the position of the gender role attitudes scale in the questionnaire as a potential source of bias. In particular, the present study aims at assessing the context effect of the family norms question on the measurement of gender role attitudes by adopting the theoretical perspective of the construal model of attitudes, according to which the adjacent questions constitute the context for interpreting and answering a stimulus. The study employs data from the CROss- National Online Survey panel, which was fielded in 2017 and contained an experiment where the order of the questions under investigation varied. The reliability, invariance and validity of the measurement of gender role attitudes across experimental settings and countries (Estonia, Great Britain and Slovenia) are explored adopting several analytical techniques within the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) framework. Whereas the measurement of gender role attitudes resulted stable between experimental settings, some differences emerged in terms of criterion and, to a lesser extent, construct validity. Differences among the countries emerged, indicating that the cultural context may interact with the question context. Finally, we stress that the measurement is overall poor, urging survey infrastructures to investigate more in depth the formulation of the items measuring gender role attitudes.

Differences in societal views on the roles of men and women have been addressed in many large-scale comparative studies by employing indicators of gender roles attitudes from cross-sectional surveys. Assuming that cross-country differences in gender role attitudes are linked to the prevailing cultural value orientations in each society, this study aims at investigating the association between societal views on gender roles, as measured by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), and the prevailing cultural values, as defined by Schwartz's theory. However, to carry out meaningful comparisons, we first assessed the prerequisite of measurement equivalence between countries. The comparability of gender role attitudes is limited when using traditional methods based on the concept of exact equivalence (multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis). However, the recently established alignment optimization procedure reveals approximate measurement equivalence and suggests that the mean comparison is trustworthy. Based on these results, we correlate the national mean levels of gender role attitudes with the cultural values of embeddedness, hierarchy and egalitarianism, showing that traditional gender roles are displayed in societies emphasizing hierarchy and embeddedness while progressive views are more expressed in egalitarian societies.

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.

The article explores the relation between identity definition and trust in different information sources in Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia following the 2011 Uprisings. While prior to 2011 literature mostly highlighted the role of pan-Arab news channels in consolidating a transnational Arab public sphere, recent studies argued that there has been a reinforcement of national media and identities in the Middle East and North Africa, as a consequence of a partial liberalisation of national broadcasting. Our study is based on the Arab Transformations survey (2014), which unlike previous surveys included questions covering both media consumption and identity definition. We looked at how in the three countries the choice of Muslim, Arab or national identity definition was associated with the preference for distinct sources of political news. The results only partially confirmed the hypothesis of a renewed importance of national media and showed that in the three countries people tended to attribute very different values to the same news sources.

Considering gender role attitudes as part of a broader cultural change related to the modernization process, this study adopts a path-dependency approach to analyze the support for the role of women in the public sphere in Italy since 1988. Modernization processes varied across Italian regions and the paper explores how different gender patterns developed accordingly. Using pooled data from European Values Survey, World Values Survey, and International Social Survey Program, the author assesses if this specific change is part of the postmaterialist shift and investigates the mechanisms of change carrying out cohort decomposition methods. The results address a reinforcement of traditionalism mainly due to the period effect that shows regional differences given by history.

This study provides a critical evaluation of the gender role attitude scale included in the fourth wave of the European Values Study. The goodness of this scale is tested considering first of all its reliability and the stability of the factorial structure. The results suggest caution in the use of this instrument: the scale presents a deep variation in reliability across countries and its configuration is not stable, displaying several different factor structures from one country to another. In considering the source of this instability, this study addresses a priming effect due to questions introduced in 2008 immediately prior to the use of the gender role attitudes scale that modified the context of response., Cette étude fournit une évaluation critique de l’échelle d’attitude du rôle de genre incluse dans la quatrième vague de l’étude des valeurs européennes. La qualité de cette échelle est testée en considérant d’abord sa fiabilité et la stabilité de la structure factorielle. Les résultats suggèrent une prudence dans l’utilisation de cet instrument : l’échelle présente une variation profonde de la fiabilité entre les pays et sa configuration n’est pas stable, affichant plusieurs structures de facteurs différents d’un pays a l’autre. En étudiant la source de cette instabilité, la présente étude aborde un effet d’amorçage en raison des questions posées en 2008 immédiatement avant l’utilisation de l’echelle des attitudes du rôle de genre qui a modifié le contexte de réponse.

Several repeated cross-national surveys include measurements of attitudes toward gender roles to investigate individuals’ beliefs regarding the appropriateness of men and women’s roles in a particular context. When used to compare attitudes across countries, these measurements reveal critical factors that could cause a lack of equivalence between different cultural contexts, and that could therefore produce misleading results. Nevertheless, the use of such measures to compare country means without assessing measurement equivalence is common. It should also be considered that the assessment of equivalence within a large-scale sample from cross-sectional surveys through multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) often fails because of the strict requirements necessary. The current article is used to assess the measurement equivalence of the gender role attitudes scale included in the last wave of the World Values Survey in 59 countries, with the main goal of identifying the most invariant model for the largest number of groups. The study involved comparing two methods belonging to the frequentist approach: MGCFA and the frequentist alignment procedure, a highly novel and promising method that is still rarely used. Using the first technique, partial scalar invariance was achieved for 27 countries. By employing the frequentist alignment optimization, an acceptable degree of noninvariance was achieved for 35 countries. Thus, the study confirmed the frequentist alignment procedure as a viable alternative to the MGCFA.