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

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.