Assessing cross-cultural item bias in questionnaires - Acculturation and the measurement of social support and family cohesion for adolescents

A method is presented for evaluating the presence and size of cross-cultura l item biases. The examined items concern parental support and family cohes ion in a Likert-type questionnaire for adolescents in The Netherlands. Each evaluated item has two versions, a collectivist and an individualistic one , that measure the same theoretical construct. The standardized difference between the score means of the item versions, called the Deltae score, give s an indication of the cultural bias of the item. As expected, most items w ere found to yield a higher Deltae when respondents scored low on an indivi dualistic scale for acculturation or originated from countries that are (mo re) collectivist. This procedure is recommended for use in testing items in pilot studies.