Institute of Psychology, University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland.
Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
PLoS One. 2018 Sep 28;13(9):e0203196. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0203196. eCollection 2018.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
我们检验了零和博弈信念（BZSG）量表在个体和国家层面上的因子结构等效性，该量表旨在衡量在有限资源竞争中关于社会关系的对抗性信念（即感知到的社会对抗）。
在本文中，我们专注于多层次建模方法中的构念同形检验。假设 BZSG 量表满足强构形同形的所有要求，因此它可用于个体和国家层面的研究。还研究了国家层面的 BZSG 与其他宏观社会经济指标之间的关系。
对来自 43 个不同国家的 11368 名参与者的跨国样本进行多层次验证性因子分析（MCFA）。我们还将每个国家的国家层面的潜在 BZSG 因子用作我们归因于特定文化的属性的指标：文化维度（集体主义-个人主义）、宏观经济指标（人均国内生产总值和人均国民总收入）和描述社会的宏观社会指标（人类发展指数和民主指数）。
结果显示，感知社会对抗（通过 BZSG 量表测量）的同形因子结构，根据个体和国家层面的等效因子结构来定义。此外，还证实了感知社会对抗与人均国民总收入和集体主义之间的关系。
我们的研究支持 BZSG 量表在同形结构情况下用于跨文化比较的有用性。在国家层面，对抗性信念出现在收入较低的分层集体主义社会中。本文的主要贡献是构念同形检验的提出。我们努力从两个不同但非常近期的方法出发，全面介绍构念同形。
