title: Factorial invariance in multilevel confirmatory factor analysis.
abstract: This paper presents a procedure to test factorial invariance in multilevel confirmatory factor analysis. When the group membership is at level 2, multilevel factorial invariance can be tested by a simple extension of the standard procedure. However level-1 group membership raises problems which cannot be appropriately handled by the standard procedure, because the dependency between members of different level-1 groups is not appropriately taken into account. The procedure presented in this article provides a solution to this problem. This paper also shows Muthén's maximum likelihood (MUML) estimation for testing multilevel factorial invariance across level-1 groups as a viable alternative to maximum likelihood estimation. Testing multilevel factorial invariance across level-2 groups and testing multilevel factorial invariance across level-1 groups are illustrated using empirical examples. SAS macro and Mplus syntax are provided.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, USA.
authors.forename: Ehri
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ryu
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D055361:Multilevel Analysis