Testing Measurement Invariance of the Left-Wing Authoritarianism Index-13 (LWAI-13) in a US Adult Sample

Abstract: Authoritarianism has been of interest to multiple fields in the social sciences (e.g., psychology, political science). Though traditionally conceptualized as a right-wing phenomenon, burgeoning research suggests it is also a left-wing phenomenon. The Left-Wing Authoritarianism Index-13 (LWAI-13) was recently developed as a brief measure of left-wing authoritarianism and its three factors: anti-hierarchical aggression, top-down censorship, and anti-conventionalism. Though prior work provided evidence for the LWAI-13’s factor structure and construct validity, its measurement invariance (MI) remains untested. We evaluated the LWAI-13’s MI regarding sex, age, and education; scalar MI was evidenced for all groupings. Thus, the structural properties of the LWAI-13 appeared robust to the three group distinctions.