Assessing the cross-national invariance of formative measures: guidelines for international business researchers

The importance of establishing equivalence in measurement prior to conducting substantive cross-country comparisons has long been emphasized in international business research. However, all approaches currently available for the investigation of measurement equivalence or invariance (ME/I) assume that the focal measures are reflective in nature. In our paper we offer guidelines for the assessment of ME/I when the focal construct is measured with formative indicators. We first identify distinct types of ME/I that are conceptually consistent with the nature of formative measurement models. We then describe a step-by-step procedure that can be employed to test for these types of ME/I in a comparative context. Lastly, we illustrate the application of the proposed procedure with data from a three-country survey on consumers product-country image perceptions. © 2010 Academy of International Business