Partial Metric Invariance of the International Measure of Public Service Motivation among Twelve Countries: A Research Note

ABSTRACT

Kim et al. (2013) developed a four-dimensional 16-item measure of public service motivation (PSM), but it failed to achieve metric invariance across the 12 countries studied. When metric invariance is at least partially established, empirically tested antecedents and outcomes of PSM in one country can be compared with those in other countries. This study re-tests the cross-country equivalence of the international PSM measure, using the same dataset and the same processes as used in Kim et al. (2013). The result provides support for partial metric invariance of the international PSM measure across the countries when releasing only one item (APP7 or COM6) among the 16 items. It means that predictive relationships (i.e., the strength of the relationships between PSM and other variables) can be meaningfully compared among the countries: Australia, Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Italy, Korea, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the USA.

KEYWORDS:

• Public service motivation
• measurement invariance
• partial metric invariance
• confirmatory factor analysis

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Professor Fred B. Bryant in the Department of Psychology at Loyola University Chicago for his valuable suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Research Program funded by the SeoulTech (Seoul National University of Science and Technology).