Does the Spiritual Values/Religion Subscale of the Self-Description Questionnaire III Function Differentially Across Heterosexual and Non-Heterosexual Young Adults? A Measurement Invariance Study

ABSTRACT

We evaluated the dimensionality and measurement invariance of the Spiritual Values/Religion (SVR) subscale from the Self-Description Questionnaire III across heterosexual and non-heterosexual young adults. We found a one-factor model provided adequate fit to the data for each group, with the SVR items exhibiting configural, metric, and scalar invariance across the two groups. Given that we established measurement invariance, we examined the latent mean difference on the construct and found the heterosexual group reported significantly higher levels of spiritual value/religion than the non-heterosexual group. Our results provided empirical support for the theorized factor structure of the SVR items and the use of the SVR subscale across heterosexual and non-heterosexual young adults, making the scale a viable option for researchers studying religiosity in these specific subpopulations.

KEYWORDS:

• Religiosity
• measurement invariance
• non-heterosexual
• heterosexual
• spiritual
• SDQ-III
• young adults

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The purpose of the Born Brave Experiences research study was to develop, assess, and evaluate a kindness and bravery scale for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) young adults. Data for the broader study were collected in two phases. The first phase of data collection was in 2013, and the second phase of data collection was in 2014.

2. We compared the demographics of our non-heterosexual young adults to the demographics of non-heterosexual young adults who participated in GLSEN’s 2017 National School Climate Survey (N = 20,236; GLSEN, 2017). With respect to sexual orientation and race, the breakdowns of our non-heterosexual sample were similar to those reported by GLSEN, with most self-identifying as either gay or lesbian and White.

3. We tested the invariance of item 1 by first fitting a configural model with item 1 as the reference item. Then we estimated 11 additional models where we constrained item 1’s factor pattern coefficients to be equal across both groups with each of the other 11 items as the reference item. We then compared the fit of the latter 11 estimated models to the fit of the configural model. We found the 11 estimated models did not fit significantly worse than the configural model, which provided evidence for the invariance of item 1 (Rensvold & Cheung, 2001).

4. In a follow-up analysis, we allowed the error variances of items 9 and 10 to correlate and reran the invariance analyses. We found no substantial differences in the results. Thus, for the sake of parsimony, we reported the results from the models without the correlated error parameter. These results are available from the first author by request.

5. To estimate the latent mean difference, we fixed the heterosexual group’s factor mean to 0 and allowed the non-heterosexual group’s factor mean to be freely estimated. The factor mean estimated in the non-heterosexual group represents the latent mean difference between the two groups (Thompson & Green, 2006).