A test for ordinal measurement invariance

Abstract

One problem with the analysis of measurement invariance is the reliance of the analysis on having a parametric model that accurately describes the data. In this paper an ordinal version of the property of measurement invariance is proposed, which relies only on nonparametric restrictions. This property of ordinal measurement invariance provides a coarse (initial) indication of measurement invariance, based on the sum scores. A small example is given to illustrate the procedure for testing the property of ordinal measurement invariance.