Inductive reasoning in Zambia, Turkey, and the Netherlands establishing cross-cultural equivalence

Tasks of inductive reasoning and its component processes were administered to 704 Zambian, 877 Turkish, and 632 Dutch pupils from the highest two grades of primary and the lowest two grades of secondary school. All items were constructed using item-generating rules. Three types of equivalence were examined: structural equivalence (Does an instrument measure the same psychological concept in each country?), measurement unit equivalence (Do the scales have the same metric in each country?), and full score equivalence (full comparability of scores across countries). Structural and measurement unit equivalence were examined in two ways. First, a MIMIC (multiple indicators, multiple causes) structural equation model was fitted, with tasks for component processes as input and inductive reasoning tasks as output. Second, using a linear logistic model, the relationship between item difficulties and the difficulties of their constituent item-generating rules was examined in each country. Both analyses of equivalence provided strong evidence for structural equivalence, but only partial evidence for measurement unit equivalence. Full score equivalence was not supported. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.