Evaluating multilevel models in cross-cultural research: An illustration with social axioms

To assess how culture influences the behavior of people, multilevel models are an immediate choice for modeling the relationship at the levels of the individual and culture. The authors propose structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the universality of psychological processes at the individual and culture levels. Specifically, the structural equivalence of the measurement (where the instrument is measuring the same construct across countries) is first tested with meta-analytic SEM. If the measurement is structurally equivalent, cross-level equivalence (where the instrument is measuring similar constructs at different levels) will then be tested with multilevel SEM. A large data set on social axioms with 7,590 university students from 40 cultural groups was used to illustrate the procedures. The results showed that the structural equivalence of the social axioms was well supported at the individual level across 40 cultural groups, whereas the cross-level equivalence was partially supported. The superiority of the SEM approach and the theoretical meaning of its solution are discussed. © 2006 Sage Publications.