Measurement of attitudes towards homosexuality: testing measurement invariance across European countries

Abstract

The statement regarding the approval of homosexuality from the European Social Survey has been used in several studies of attitudes towards homosexuality. I use data from the 8th wave of the ESS to evaluate the validity of the approval measure. The 8th wave included an additional statement regarding the support for LGBT adoption rights, which allows me to test the relevance and the measurement invariance of the approval measure. I find that the approval measure is strongly correlated with the measure of the support for LGBT rights, but there exist fundamental differences in the understanding of the approval statement between European countries.