Measuring Collective Action Intention Toward Gender Equality Across Cultures

Collective action (CA) could be understood as intentional and conscious civic behaviors that are focused on systemic causes of social and societal problems and the promotion of solutions for these challenges through collective efforts. Recently, more studies on CA have been conducted, with attention paid to cross-cultural variations in people’s intention to pursue collective goals with others. Various instruments to measure collective action intentions have been developed; some are related to the general tendency to collectively act with members of one’s social group, and some are more context specific. In the presented paper, we examined the psychometric isomorphism and measurement invariance of a gender equality collective action intention scale (GECAI scale) using data from university samples in 61 countries across 13 world regions (N = 32,901). The findings indicate that scalar measurement invariance for the GECAI scale allows for comparison of the countries’ GECAI mean scores. Moreover, metric psychometric isomorphism allows for interpretation of the GECAI mean scores at a country-level as a group attribute (and not solely as an individual attribute).