Edited by: José Antonio Lozano Lozano, Universidad Autónoma de Chile, Chile
Reviewed by: Helena Carvalho, University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE), Portugal; Fco. Pablo Holgado-Tello, National University of Distance Education (UNED), Spain
This article was submitted to Quantitative Psychology and Measurement, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
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This article introduces a validation study of the Czech version of an independent and interdependent self-construal questionnaire (SCS,
Formulated in the 1970s by Hofstede, the cultural dimension of individualism/collectivism (I/C) has become a popular theoretical concept in cross-cultural psychology and a useful tool to structure and measure the psychological characteristics of members of various cultures (
Despite the popularity of the construct, there is unfortunately no widely accepted method of measuring the individual level of I/C.
The debate on the number of factors and their structure is still ongoing and the existing research has suggested that the concept of an independent and interdependent self might be one-dimensional (
Such ambiguity raises a question about the true underlying factor structure and therefore calls for further investigation on independent samples (
Several previous studies have already been conducted on Czech participants with mixed results. Hofstede’s (
Unfortunately, these mixed results might be caused by the lack of valid and reliable tools to measure I/C, because adaptation attempts are relatively sparse for the Czech population. The first exception is an adaptation of INDCOL (
The second exception, an attempt to adapt an I/C questionnaire into Czech, is a translation and cross-cultural verification of the Independent and Interdependent Self Scale (IISS;
The third exception is found in several adaptations of traditional methods measuring the cultural values, where individualism represents one of the cultural values. These Czech adaptations include VSM-94 (Value Survey Module 1994;
As mentioned above, the two-dimensional model of the IISS failed in the factor structure validation on the Czech sample, and Hofstede’s one-dimensional model is claimed to be outdated and considered obsolete and invalid by many scholars (e.g.,
Data were collected from 330 Czech participants. This number of participants should be satisfactory for several reasons: (1) our proposed models are simple and they are composed only of several first-order factors and indicators (
The research sample was 77% (
Demographic characteristic of sample.
Variable | Choice | Frequency |
Gender | Man | 76 (23.03%) |
Woman | 254 (76.97%) | |
Age | Range | 18–65 |
Mean (SD)/median (IQR) | 24.293 (6.536)/23 (4) | |
Family status | Single | 193 (58.485%) |
In partnership | 105 (31.818%) | |
Married | 24 (7.273%) | |
Divorced | 7 (2.121%) | |
Widow | 1 (0.303%) | |
Education | Primary school | 2 (0.606%) |
High school | 194 (58.788%) | |
Higher vocational school | 3 (0.909%) | |
University | 131 (39.697%) | |
Field of study/occupation | Psychology | 114 (34.545%) |
International studies | 29 (8.788%) | |
IT | 12 (3.636%) | |
Pedagogy | 19 (5.758%) | |
Regional development | 16 (4.848%) | |
Information studies and librarianship | 9 (2.727%) | |
Languages and history | 29 (8.788%) | |
Other | 102 (30.909%) | |
Salary of family during childhood | 1300 CZK and less | 21 (6.364%) |
1300–6500 CZK | 84 (25.455%) | |
6500–13000 CZK | 130 (39.394%) | |
13000–33000 CZK | 79 (23.939%) | |
More than 33000 CZK | 16 (4.848%) | |
Religion | Atheist | 144 (43.636%) |
Christianity | 79 (23.939%) | |
Spiritually based person | 92 (27.879%) | |
Other | 15 (4.545%) | |
Political opinions | No preference | 134 (40.606%) |
Liberalism | 103 (31.212%) | |
Environmentalism and green politics | 45 (13.636%) | |
Conservatism | 24 (7.273%) | |
Socialism | 10 (3.030%) | |
Nationalism | 5 (1.515%) | |
Anarchy | 4 (1.212%) | |
Other | 5 (1.515%) | |
Number of siblings | 0 | 51 (15.455%) |
1 | 161 (48.788%) | |
2 | 78 (23.636%) | |
3 | 26 (7.879%) | |
4 and more | 14 (4.242%) |
Data collection was conducted between December 2018 - February 2019. The participants were mostly gathered through university social groups and social websites (i.e., the non-probability convenience sampling method) which resulted in a research sample with an over-represented student part of the population compared to other groups. The participants were informed about the ethical aspects of the research, especially data anonymization, their voluntary participation and the option to end the questionnaire at any time without giving a reason. In order to proceed further with the administration, they had to consent with their participation in the research. All items were administered randomly to avoid possible response biases caused by context influences and preceding questions (for review, see
In order to minimize any potential method bias caused by an imperfect translation procedure (
The SCS was developed by
The SCS consists of thirty-eight, nine-point, Likert-type numerical items scaled from 1 (not at all) to 9 (exactly), with three intermediate anchor-points (3 – a little, 5 – moderately, 7 – very well). The SCS contains half reversed items, which should enhance the validity of the factor structure and minimize the acquiescence bias (
The authors used exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic techniques, MG-CFA, multilevel analysis and other statistical procedures (such as modeling acquiescence as a common method factor in CFA or ipsatization for reliability estimation) in their validation study. Even though the authors did not perform an analysis of MI, they discussed it in relation to the items’ factor loadings, which in their opinion suggested a satisfactory invariance. However, no reliability estimation was performed in the validation study. The SCS was also tested for response biases in their follow-up study (cf.
Using Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) in the first study, the authors identified seven dimensions of the SCS, namely “Self-reliance vs. Dependence on others,” “Self-containment vs. Connection to others,” “Difference vs. Similarity,” “Commitment to others vs. Self-interest,” “Consistency vs. Variability,” “Self-direction vs. Receptiveness to influence” and “Self-expression vs. Harmony.” The CFA partially confirmed the factor structure in the second study. The authors presented two respective models: model 1, which was comprised of 38 items, and model 2, with 26 items. The first model yielded good fit indices despite an insufficient
The INDCOL was introduced by
The Czech validation study was conducted by
In order to examine the factor structure of both questionnaires, we performed a CFA with a robust, weighted, least square mean and variance (WLSMV) estimator, which is suitable for ordinal and non-Gaussian distributed data from Likert-type scales (
Internal consistency of subscales was assessed with Cronbach’s α and McDonald’s ω. We used the 0.70 threshold of internal consistency as a satisfactory indicator of reliability. We also performed a reliability analysis with ipsatization in order to reduce culture-specific response and acquiescence biases (
Convergent validity between and within measures was verified with nonparametric Spearman’s correlation analyses, while each subscale score was entered into analysis as arithmetic mean. We interpreted correlation coefficients higher than 0.50 as indicators of minimally acceptable convergent validity and coefficients higher than 0.70 as sufficient evidence for convergent validity (
The descriptive statistics (means, standard deviations, skewness and kurtosis) of all scales are shown in
The descriptive statistics of subscale scores.
Scale | Subscale | Skewness | Kurtosis | ||
SCS | Difference vs. Similarity | 5.59 [5.43, 5.75] | 1.45 | −0.143 | −0.423 |
Self-containment vs. Connection to others | 4.28 [4.14, 4.43] | 1.37 | 0.501 | −0.122 | |
Self-direction vs. Receptiveness to influence | 6.03 [5.88, 6.18] | 1.40 | −0.036 | −0.726 | |
Self-reliance vs. Dependence on others | 6.61 [6.44, 6.77] | 1.50 | −0.658 | 0.521 | |
Consistency vs. Variability | 5.09 [4.91, 5.27] | 1.67 | −0.044 | −0.460 | |
Self-expression vs. Harmony | 5.02 [4.89, 5.16] | 1.28 | −0.121 | −0.179 | |
Self-interest vs. Commitment to others | 4.66 [4.51, 4.81] | 1.36 | 0.412 | −0.167 | |
INDCOL | Vertical individualism | 3.81 [3.68, 3.93] | 1.15 | 0.240 | −0.273 |
Horizontal collectivism | 5.21 [5.12, 5.31] | 0.86 | −0.498 | 0.247 | |
Vertical collectivism | 3.41 [3.30, 3.52] | 1.01 | 0.136 | −0.244 | |
Horizontal individualism 1 | 4.88 [4.75, 5.01] | 1.21 | −0.623 | −0.114 | |
Horizontal individualism 2 | 4.21 [4.07, 4.36] | 1.34 | 0.107 | −0.556 |
The Czech version of the SCS showed satisfactory
The SCS and SCS modified model fit indices compared to the original version by
Model | Chi-Square | ||||||
CZ SCS 1 | χ2 (644) = 1232.107 | <0.001 | 0.053 [0.048, 0.057] | 0.080 | 0.775 | 0.755 | 0.920 |
CZ SCS 2 | χ2 (625) = 1125.036 | <0.001 | 0.049 [0.045, 0.054] | 0.073 | 0.809 | 0.785 | 0.931 |
Original SCS | NR | NR | 0.046 [NR] | 0.050 | 0.790 | NR | NR |
CZ SCS Mod. | χ2 (632) = 1011.010 | <0.001 | 0.043 [0.038, 0.048] | 0.066 | 0.855 | 0.839 | 0.943 |
CZ SCS (1 second-order factor) | χ2 (658) = 1392.214 | <0.001 | 0.058 [0.054, 0.062] | 0.093 | 0.720 | 0.700 | 0.893 |
CZ SCS (bifactor) | χ2 (606) = 975.433 | <0.001 | 0.043 [0.038, 0.048] | 0.060 | 0.859 | 0.836 | 0.951 |
CZ SCS (2 factors) | χ2 (664) = 2013.118 | <0.001 | 0.079 [0.075, 0.083] | 0.121 | 0.485 | 0.454 | 0.824 |
CZ SCS 3 | χ2 (605) = 975.774 | <0.001 | 0.043 [0.038, 0.048] | 0.059 | 0.858 | 0.835 | 0.953 |
Almost all of the items’ factor loadings besides three instances were above the recommended 0.40 threshold (
An analysis of the potential cross-loadings with a modification index (
The analysis of modification indices showed that the SCS contained multiple cross-loaded items. If all of the above-mentioned cross-loadings are included in the model (CZ SCS Mod.; see
The same CFA procedure was applied for the INDCOL scale with similar results as the SCS. The relative chi-square (χ2/df) was 2.118, which suggested a good global fit. The
The INDCOL fit indices compared to the original version by
Model | Chi-Square | ||||||
CZ INDOCL (5 factors) | χ2(242) = 521.126 | <0.001 | 0.059 [0.052, 0.066] | 0.074 | 0.779 | 0.748 | 0.932 |
CZ INDOCL (4 factors) | χ2(246) = 537.226 | <0.001 | 0.060 [0.053, 0.067] | 0.077 | 0.769 | 0.741 | 0.929 |
Original INDCOL | χ2(458) = 898.88 | NR | 0.089 [NR] | NR | NR | NR | 0.75 |
Concerning the reliability of the SCS, Cronbach’s α varied between 0.667 and 0.855, while McDonald’s ω fell between 0.651 and 0.854 (see
Reliability estimations of the Czech version of the SCS subscales.
Dimension | ||
Difference vs. Similarity | 0.759 (0.571) | 0.771 |
Self-containment vs. Connection to others | 0.697 (0.634) | 0.707 |
Self-direction vs. Receptiveness to influence | 0.670 (0.265) | 0.674 |
Self-reliance vs. Dependence on others | 0.772 (0.624) | 0.774 |
Consistency vs. Variability | 0.855 (0.782) | 0.854 |
Self-expression vs. Harmony | 0.651 (0.291) | 0.651 |
Self-interest vs. Commitment to others | 0.763 (0.463) | 0.764 |
Concerning the reliability of the INDCOL, α varied between 0.502 and 0.812 (for ipsative α between 0.432 and 0.642), while ω fell between 0.483 and 0.814 (see
Reliability estimations of the Czech version of the INDCOL subscales.
Dimension | α INDCOL (ipsatized) | ω INDCOL |
Vertical individualism (VI) | 0.812 (0.642) | 0.814 |
Horizontal individualism 1 (HI1) | 0.564 (0.432) | 0.483 |
Horizontal individualism 2 (HI2) | 0.502 (0.510) | 0.510 |
Vertical collectivism (VC) | 0.589 (0.435) | 0.577 |
Horizontal collectivism (HC) | 0.739 (0.632) | 0.737 |
In the following section, the results of the correlation analyses between subscales of the original and adapted version of SCS, between subscales of the original and adapted version of INDCOL, and between scales of SCS and INDOL are reported. A comparison of Spearman’s ρ to the original correlation coefficients (by
Comparison of the estimated correlations in the Czech version (below diagonal) and the original version (above diagonal) of the SCS by
Dimension | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
1. Difference vs. Similarity | − | 0.112 | 0.288 | 0.436 | 0.136 | 0.401 | 0.214 |
2. Self-containment vs. Connection to others | 0.143** [0.035, 0.247] | − | 0.625 | −0.075 | −0.219 | 0.330 | 0.557 |
3. Self-direction vs. Receptiveness to influence | 0.299*** [0.197, 0.394] | 0.405*** [0.311, 0.492] | − | 0.328 | −0.002 | 0.417 | 0.435 |
4. Self-reliance vs. Dependence on others | 0.240*** [0.135, 339] | 0.125* [0.017, 0.229] | 0.479*** [0.391, 0.558] | − | 0.301 | 0.132 | 0.104 |
5. Consistency vs. Variability | 0.267*** [0.164, 0.364] | −0.008 [−0.116, 0.100] | 0.243*** [0.139, 0.342] | 0.193*** [0.086, 0.294] | − | 0.252 | −0.141 |
6. Self-expression vs. Harmony | 0.450*** [0.360, 0.532] | 0.246*** [0.142, 0.345] | 0.424*** [0.331, 0.509] | 0.180** [0.074, 0.283] | 0.299*** [0.198, 0.394] | − | 0.366 |
7. Self-interest vs. Commitment to others | 0.334*** [0.234, 0.426] | 0.619*** [0.547, 0.681] | 0.468*** [0.379, 0.548] | 0.300*** [0.199, 0.395] | 0.043 [−0.065, 0.150] | 0.443*** [0.352, 0.526] | − |
A comparison of the Spearman’s ρ correlations and original correlations of the Czech INDCOL version among the subscales is shown in
Comparison of the estimated correlations in the current (below diagonal) and original study (above diagonal) of the Czech version of INDCOL by
Dimension | VI | HI1 | HI2 | VC | HC |
VI | − | NR | NR | NR | 0.19*** |
HI1 | 0.292*** [0.190, 0.388] | − | NR | −0.13*** | −0.12*** |
HI2 | 0.241*** [0.136, 0.340] | 0.112* [0.004, 0.217] | − | −0.13*** | 0.11*** |
VC | −0.083 [−0.189, 0.025] | −0.214*** [−0.314, −0.108] | −0.214*** [−0.315, −0.109] | − | NR |
HC | −0.217*** [−0.318, −0.112] | −0.157** [−0.261, −0.050] | −0.308*** [−0.403, −0.207] | 0.402*** [0.308, 0.489] | − |
Relationships were also expected between the SCS subscales and the INDCOL subscales as a demonstration of convergent validity. We assumed that HC and VC (i.e., collectivism) should be negatively correlated with all SCS subscales, whereas HI1, HI2 and VI (i.e., individualism) should correlate positively. As shown in
Coefficients of Spearman’s rho in the SCS and INDCOL.
Dimension | VI | HI1 | HI2 | VC | HC |
Difference vs. Similarity | 0.269*** [0.166, 0.366] | 0.586*** [0.510, 0.652] | 0.053 [−0.055, 0.160] | −0.347*** [−0.439, −0.249] | −0.098 [−0.204, 0.010] |
Self-containment vs. Connection to others | 0.154** [0.047, 0.258] | 0.160*** [0.053, 0.263] | 0.273*** [0.170, 0.370] | −0.389*** [−0.477, −0.293] | −0.561*** [−0.631, −0.482] |
Self-direction vs. Receptiveness to influence | 0.086 [−0.023, 0.192] | 0.234*** [0.130, 0.334] | 0.290*** [0.186, 0.386] | −0.552*** [−0.623, −0.473] | −0.285*** [−0.381, −0.182] |
Self-reliance vs. Dependence on others | 0.210*** [0.104, 0.311] | 0.277*** [0.174, 0.374] | 0.263*** [0.159, 0.361] | −0.324*** [−0.417, −0.223] | −0.155*** [−0.258, −0.047] |
Consistency vs. Variability | −0.061 [−0.168, 0.047] | 0.090 [−0.018, 0.196] | 0.062 [−0.046, 0.169] | −0.139* [−0.244, −0.032] | 0.099 [−0.009, 0.205] |
Self-expression vs. Harmony | 0.204*** [0.098, 0.305] | 0.228*** [0.123, 0.328] | 0.139* [0.032, 0.243] | −0.496*** [−0.573, −0.410] | −0.162** [−0.265, −0.055] |
Self-interest vs. Commitment to others | 0.370*** [0.273, 0.459] | 0.336*** [0.237, 0.429] | 0.325*** [0.225, 0.419] | −0.493*** [−0.571, −0.407] | −0.513*** [−0.589, −0.429] |
A validation study of the SCS was conducted and the psychometric properties of the SCS were examined. As
In summary, both questionnaires demonstrated limitations in their reliability and validity. These shortcomings could have stemmed from the lack of reliability and validity of the original versions (
In more detail, despite that Czech version of the SCS showed satisfactory reliability in four subscales (the rest of the subscales were only slightly below the 0.70), similar correlations between subscales were observed and similar fit indices were obtained in comparison with the original study (
Four main issues were identified. First, the reliability estimation with ipsative scores showed poor internal consistency suggesting that the SCS may be influenced by response biases. Second, the CFA results were unsatisfactory, and therefore cross-cultural comparisons using this questionnaire might be biased, non-invariant and invalid (
Consequently, the third issue stemmed from an analysis of the modification indices, which revealed some cross-loadings. For example, the item “
And four, despite that all directions of relationships between SCS and INDCOL were as expected, i.e., the dimensions of horizontal and vertical collectivism correlated with interdependent self, whereas the dimensions of horizontal and vertical individualism correlated with independent self, the correlation coefficients were mostly small or moderate. This suggests, that both scales probably measure slightly different and insufficiently related constructs The above-mentioned issues with the SCS lead us to questions about the I/C concept itself, because similar issues were observed in multiple previous studies (see below).
Research of I/C has been criticized by many scholars. Generally, there is no questionnaire in the literature measuring I/C that repeatedly meets the demanding requirements of cross-cultural research (i.e., CFA, MG-CFA, MI across different cultures, controlling for response bias, etc.). Many studies do not sufficiently conduct or report these important psychometric properties, and do not conduct any adequate multi-level analysis (
As mentioned above, the original validation studies of INDCOL (
On the other hand, there are also several exceptions. For example, the Human Relations Questionnaire (HRQ;
Other examples can be the PVQ (
In this paper we conducted an attempt to validate an adaptation of a relatively new I/C scale on a Czech sample which is a sample not fitting into the group of West and East countries (such as the United States, England, Japan, China) that are studied the most often in the field. In this section we want to provide information about other similar research going beyond this dichotomy, both successful and unsuccessful ones. We omit adaptations without a CFA procedure or its adequate equivalent, which unfortunately represents the vast majority of studies (
Nevertheless, these successful attempts are relatively rare compared to the amount of studies that failed to do so. In spite of the fact that the authors themselves often interpreted the quality of the adaptations as satisfactory and part of studies is indeed methodologically and statistically sound, a deeper inspection reveals issues in the factor structure of the adapted scales. The adaptations usually did not yield satisfactory fit indices. In some cases, the number of factors and items were substantially changed compared to the original scales. Despite the fact that these model modifications and changes lead in some cases to the satisfactory fit indices of the “new” scales, this rather data-driven approach needs to be considered exploratory (see e.g.,
Similar psychometric problems with the adaptation of the I/C scale as in the current study were observed for instance in Poland (cf.
The current, rather unsatisfactory results might have deeper causes than just the psychometric quality of the original SCS scale. Even though past studies assumed I/C being a stable cross-cultural construct with an ambition to categorize nations along the collectivistic and individualistic spectrum, these assumptions were not entirely confirmed. It seems that the relatively simplistic East-West dichotomy doesn’t truly exist (
The results of our study are based on the unrepresentative sample gained through the non-probability convenience sampling method which resulted in various imbalances of demographic characteristics, especially in the overrepresentation of women, young participants and participants with a university education. An analysis performed on different populations might result in a different factor structure. However, I/C research usually validates the scales on samples of university students; for example, INDCOL (
The future research should, in the first step, focus on a redefinition and reconceptualization of the I/C construct (e.g.,
One of the possible ways to achieve this is the development of a new self-report instrument with satisfactory psychometric properties with the potential to be adapted in multiple cultures (
The second possible approach to solve the current unsatisfactory situation in I/C research could lie in a shift from quantitative self-report questionnaires based on verbal responses to the usage of entirely different group of methods (e.g.,
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by The Research Ethics Committee of Masaryk University (Ref. No.: EKV-2018-011, Proposal No.: 0257/2018). Written informed consent for participation was not required for this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements. Written informed consent was implied via completion of the questionnaires.
DL contributed to data collection, article drafting, and data analysis. JČ contributed to questionnaire adaptation, data collection, and article drafting. TU contributed to article revisions and data analysis. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: