Year: 2026
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Ensuring cross-national comparability is a core methodological requirement in cross-national research on child wellbeing. When measures lack comparability, it becomes unclear whether observed differences among countries reflect true variation in child wellbeing or are merely artifacts of biased measurement instruments and procedures. Three core threats to comparability are commonly distinguished: construct bias, method bias, and item bias. At the heart of these concerns lies the concept of measurement invariance, which refers to the requirement that a given construct carry the same meaning across countries and time points. This chapter provides an overview of practical solutions and best practices in data harmonization for child wellbeing research, and GUIDE’s approach on how to ensure cross-national comparability in its cross-national longitudinal study on child wellbeing is introduced. This includes the development of standardized survey instruments, and rigorous translation protocols. In addition, the chapter introduces measurement invariance testing as a statistical tool to assess whether instruments function equivalently across different cultural and national contexts. A case study demonstrates how GUIDE can apply multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA) to empirically evaluate the comparability of its core constructs.
Language: English
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7204543299