The need for cognitive closure scale: Structure, cross-cultural invariance, and comparison of mean ratings between European-American and East Asian samples

Abstract

The aim of the present study is twofold: (1) to test the factor structure of the Need for Closure scale (NFCS) in three different samples that were not studied previously: Polish (N = 340), Flemish (N = 623), and Korean (N = 429); and (2) to test the invariance of the structure of the scale across the present samples, as well as an American sample (N = 240). With respect to the first objective, our results point out that the two second-order factor model should be preferred. This result corroborates previous studies on American and west European samples. With respect to the second objective, the results provide support for structural invariance, partial metric invariance and partial scalar invariance of the NFC scale across the four samples. In other words, the need for cognitive closure has the same basic meaning and structure cross-nationally, and ratings can be meaningfully compared across countries. The results also revealed significant higher need for closure mean scores in the American and Korean samples than in the Flemish and especially the Polish samples.