Refining the Short Social Dominance Orientation Scale (SSDO): A Validation in Seven European Countries

Abstract

People and societies differ in their tendency to justify inequalities and group hierarchies, a motivation that has been labelled social dominance orientation (SDO). In order to efficiently measure this motivational tendency, Pratto and colleagues (2013, https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550612473663) proposed the four-item Short Social Dominance Orientation (SSDO) scale. The present study comprehensively assesses the SSDO scale’s psychometric properties in seven European countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, France, Hungary, Italy, and Poland). Using large and diverse samples from these countries, we propose a measurement model to assess the scale’s structural validity and we assess measurement invariance (MI), reliability, and convergent validity. Results suggest that the scale is sufficiently reliable, shows theoretically predictable and consistent correlations with external criteria across countries, it exhibits at least partial scalar and partial uniqueness MI across the seven countries and full MI across gender. These findings offer support for the psychometric quality of the SSDO scale and its usefulness for cross-national and multi-topic social surveys.