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Testing the Internal Validity of the Inglehart Thesis by Means of a Latent Class Choice ModelTilburg University, The Netherlands, guy.moors{at}uvt.nl Inglehart's short postmaterialism index uses partial ranking of four items to classify respondents within three classes, i.e. a materialist, a postmaterialist and a mixed category. An appropriate technique for validating this index is a latent class choice model. Analysing data from the Eurobarometer surveys with this approach confirms the existence of a postmaterialist class. However, a materialist class cannot be identified irrevocably. Rather, an `authoritarian' or `conservative' latent class has to be distinguished from an `economic materialist' latent class. As such, there is empirical evidence for theoretical arguments that have been raised in the past, even within the restricted framework of the Inglehart thesis. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the cohort variable is unrelated to the `economic materialist' latent class, putting strain on adherents of the scarcity hypothesis. Education proves to be the key covariate of `economic' materialism, whereas cohort differences are pronounced in the case of `maintaining order in the nation'. Country differences also shift depending on the latent class model that is selected.
Key Words: latent class analysis • measurement • postmaterialism • ranking data • validity
Acta Sociologica, Vol. 50, No. 2,
147-160 (2007) |
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