1. ESRC Research Methods Festival
Using Structural Equation Modelling to re-examine the association between gender and social trust: the search for measurement equivalence
Sarah Louise Bulloch
Research Student
University of Surrey
Introduction

2. ESRC Research Methods Festival
Remit of the Research
Social and Political Trust project
“to apply a range of advanced statistical modelling techniques to the UK's rich secondary data resources to investigate the causes and consequences of social and political trust”
Social trust and gender
Explain the interest in the study of trust – that it covaries with important indicators of societal wellbeing etc…
Explain the lack of attention to the role that gender plays in helping us to understand variation in levels of social trust. Only main effects models, very few significant effects of gender found – cite some.

3. Why we might expect gender to be associated with social trust
ESRC Research Methods Festival
Why we might expect gender to be associated with social trust
Education
(Brehm and Rahn 1997, Uslaner 2002, Li et. al. 2005, Sturgis et. al. 2007)
Paid employment
(Brehm and Rahn 1997, Glaeser et. al. 1999, Inglehart 1999)
Income (Paterson 1999, Uslaner 2002)
Political capital (Claibourn and Martin 2000)
Each of these factors positively predict trust.
It is likely that these relationships are gendered:
education: co-education and standardised curriculum for boys and girls has equalised the educational playing field somewhat and we are seeing more and more women entering tertiary education. Although it is widely argued that there are persistent inequalities in relation to education, particularly regarding the types of subjects that girls and boys are encouraged to pursue, there have been many changes in the last 50 years with regards to gender equality in education. If education positively predicts trust, and more women are receiving higher levels of education, then women’s trust levels must have risen relative to men’s over that time.
Paid employment: Women are still substantially less likely than men to have uninterrupted, progressive careers. They are more likely to be in part time employment and in service, rather than managerial positions. Nevertheless, there are a group of women for whom the prospect of pursuing a career is now far more possible than it would have been half a century ago. If being in paid employment goes hand in hand with higher levels of trust, then there are women who are likely to be more trusting relatively to men than they were 50 years ago.
Income: It is difficult to estimate women’s income relative to men’s due to fact that income is usually measured at the household level. Yet given that a large proportion of women are primarily engaged in unpaid domestic labour, and that those women who are in paid employment are more likely than men to have low-paid, part-time jobs, it is possible to say that women are poorer than men are. This inequality is likely to be magnified in later life when women are likely to out-live their partners and are less likely to be in receipt of a reliable pension. If higher income positively predicts trust, and women are poorer than men overall, then women are likely to be less trusting than men.
Political capital: Women tend to feel less politically efficacious, that is that they are less likely than men to feel that they can influence politics. FIND A BETTER EXPLANATION OF POLITICAL EFFICACY. They are also less likely to actually be involved in politics than men, and are therefore less likely to be represented by female politicians. Research has suggested that women are put off by the “sleaze” in politics and are less likely to agree with the “game”. If women are politically marginalised in these ways, it is possible that they do not feel the same sense of efficacy optimism and control (Uslaner 2002) than men do, resulting in lower levels of trust.
Exploring these ideas requires modelling that goes beyond main effects analyses.

4. How to explore these associations?
ESRC Research Methods Festival
How to explore these associations?
European Social Survey
3 Trust Questions:
ppltrst: ‘Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?
pplfair: Do you think that most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance or would they try to be fair?
plhelp: Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful or are they mostly looking out for themselves?
Having decided I want to go beyond main effects models, and having looked at the data available to me it soon became clear that structural equation modelling would be a useful statistical technique to employ.
Explain data
Go through questions that measure trust. Mention that they allow trust to be modelled as a latent – as will be shown.
But then I noticed a potential problem: basic descriptive analyses and comparisons of means in different ESS countries indicated that the three questions have somewhat interesting answer differences by gender. Explain.
Tested whether this was the case using SEM in AMOS

5. Problem: measurement equivalence of trust across gender
ESRC Research Methods Festival
Problem: measurement equivalence of trust across gender
Gender B A
Explain the diagram in stages. First only measurement model without the gender part. Then the main effect of gender comes in, then the differential item function pathway.

6. Measurement equivalence of social trust across gender ESS 04
ESRC Research Methods Festival
Measurement equivalence of social trust across gender ESS 04
YES NO
Britain
Austria
Czech Rep
Belgium
France
Denmark
Greece
Estonia
Portugal
Finland
Slovakia
Germany
Spain
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Slovenia
Sweden
Switzerland
Ukraine
France, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Spain, Greece, Portugal and Britain

7. Implications and reflections
ESRC Research Methods Festival
Implications and reflections
Comparison of mean trust levels is problematic in most countries.
Opens new research idea: substantive explanation for differential item functions?
SEM approach brought the issue to light
But is the method appropriate for the research instrument/ question? Sensitivity of fit measures etc

8. ESRC Research Methods Festival
Thank you.
For links to papers from the SAPT project please see