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ESRC Research Methods Festival. Using Structural Equation Modelling to re-examine the association between gender and social trust: the search for measurement equivalence Sarah Louise Bulloch Research Student University of Surrey S.Bulloch@surrey.ac.uk. ESRC Research Methods Festival.
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ESRC Research Methods Festival Using Structural Equation Modelling to re-examine the association between gender and social trust: the search for measurement equivalence Sarah Louise Bulloch Research Student University of Surrey S.Bulloch@surrey.ac.uk
ESRC Research Methods Festival • Remit of the Research • Social and Political Trust project • “to apply a range of advanced statistical modelling techniques to the UK's rich secondary data resources to investigate the causes and consequences of social and political trust” • Social trust and gender
ESRC Research Methods Festival • Why we might expect gender to be associated with social trust • Education • (Brehm and Rahn 1997, Uslaner 2002, Li et. al. 2005, Sturgis et. al. 2007) • Paid employment • (Brehm and Rahn 1997, Glaeser et. al. 1999, Inglehart 1999) • Income (Paterson 1999, Uslaner 2002) • Political capital (Claibourn and Martin 2000)
ESRC Research Methods Festival • How to explore these associations? • European Social Survey • 3 Trust Questions: • ppltrst: ‘Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people? • pplfair: Do you think that most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance or would they try to be fair? • plhelp: Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful or are they mostly looking out for themselves?
ESRC Research Methods Festival Problem: measurement equivalence of trust across gender Gender B A
ESRC Research Methods Festival Measurement equivalence of social trust across gender ESS 04
ESRC Research Methods Festival • Implications and reflections • Comparison of mean trust levels is problematic in most countries. • Opens new research idea: substantive explanation for differential item functions? • SEM approach brought the issue to light • But is the method appropriate for the research instrument/ question? Sensitivity of fit measures etc
ESRC Research Methods Festival Thank you. For links to papers from the SAPT project please see http://www.sapt.surrey.ac.uk/resources.htm