Attitudes toward standardized progress measures: Development of a revised measure in China and cross-cultural validation in the United States.

Abstract

Objective: This study investigated whether the revised factor structure of the Attitudes Towards Standardized Assessment Scales: Monitoring and Feedback (ASA-MF) could be used within Chinese professionals and to examine cross-cultural equivalence of the measure across samples in the United States and China.

Method: Study 1 evaluated the ASA-MF's factor structure in two separated samples of Chinese clinicians (N₁ = 428, N2 = 400). As the hypothesized 18-item structure was not supported, we established the revised ASA-MF (ASA-MFR). Study 2 validated the ASA-MFR factor structure in a U.S. clinician sample (N = 455). Study 3 tested ASA-MFR's cross-national invariance using both multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA) and the alignment method.

Results: We identified a re-scored three-factor version (i.e., Perceived Benefits, Practical Challenges, and Validity Concerns) with good psychometric properties across all samples. MG-CFA supported full metric invariance, indicating that the items carried comparable meanings across cultural groups. Alignment analyses further indicated approximate scalar invariance for the Perceived Benefits factor, allowing for meaningful mean-level comparisons. Chinese professionals reported significantly greater perceived benefits of standardized progress measures than their U.S. counterparts.

Conclusions: Re-scoring the original ASA-MF using the factor structure from the ASA-MFR may be a psychometrically robust method for comparing clinician attitudes toward standardized progress measures across both the United States and China.