Evaluating Change in Social and Political Trust in Europe Using Multiple Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis with Structured Means

In social science, we typically work with measures that are laden with error. This chapter provides a non-technical introduction to the use of confirmatory factor analysis for cross-national comparisons that include mean structures and control for measurement errors. This method allows for the testing of hypotheses about group mean differences on unobserved, latent variables instead of manifest composite variables such as summated scales or factor score estimates. The method is demonstrated with an analysis of social and political trust in Europe in three waves of the European Social Survey.