Measurement Equivalence of the System Trustworthiness Scale Across Tasks

The System Trustworthiness Scale (STS) is a recent measure designed to capture trustworthiness perceptions. However, no tests of measurement equivalence (ME) have been conducted despite its importance for scale implementation. Measurement equivalence testing determines if the construct of interest is interpreted the same across groups, which is an important pre-requisite to examining group mean differences. The present work sought to investigate the measurement equivalence of the STS with multigroup confirmatory factor analyses across two different tasks to better understand the impact of context on system trustworthiness. The results provided evidence of ME, demonstrating the interpretability of the STS across contexts, providing additional evidence for the diverse use and interpretability of the STS as a measure of system trustworthiness. The authors implore future research to further examine potential measurement differences to better understand the generalizability of the STS.