The Cross-National Invariance Properties of a New Scale to Measure 19 Basic Human Values: A Test Across Eight Countries

Abstract

Several studies that measured basic human values across countries with the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ-21) reported violations of measurement invariance. Such violations may hinder meaningful cross-cultural research on human values because value scores may not be comparable. Schwartz et al. (2012) proposed a refined value theory and a new instrument (PVQ-5X) to measure 19 more narrowly defined values. We tested the measurement invariance of this instrument across eight countries. Configural and metric invariance were established for all values across almost all countries. Scalar invariance was supported across nearly all countries for 10 values. The analyses revealed that the cross-country invariance properties of the values measured with the PVQ-5X are substantially better than those measured with the PVQ-21.