Peter Schmidt

University of Giessen | JLU · Institut für Politikwissenschaft and Centre for Environment and Development(ZEU)

Age-related cognitive decline has become an increasingly relevant public health issue. However, risk and protective factors of cognitive decline have yet to be investigated prospectively taking into account genetic, lifestyle, physical and mental health factors. Population-based data from middle-aged (40 to 59 years; N = 2,764) and older individual...

This chapter investigates levels of anti-immigrant attitudes in Germany between 1980 and 2016 (in East Germany between 1994 and 2016) and possible factors shaping them, both at the individual and the contextual level. In our analyses, we use ALLBUS (German General Social Survey) Data from 1980 to 2016. We first check whether the measures composing...

Since the unification of the two German states in 1990, antisemitic attitudes have been repeatedly polled in cross-sectional or longitudinal national surveys (e.g., the long-term GFE surveys). So far, comparative studies analyzing the development of antisemitism in East and West Germany over a longer time period are scarce. The study covers a time...

This editors’ introduction into the themed issue of IJCS dedicated to the analysis of comparative survey work on national identity and globalization presents a very brief overview of core hypotheses from the five articles collected in the issue. The articles offer a variety of new, rather differentiated insights into how individual-level national i...

The aim of this study is to compare results of measuring the Schwartz (2004) cultural value orientations using multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (ML CFA) vs. the unweighted aggregated means (simple means) used in previous research. We conduct this comparison with data from the 21-item short version of the Portrait Values Questionnaire in 6 rou...

Measurement invariance tests are an important precondition to analyze cross-national data. However, the traditional approach of multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) has been criticized as too strict and more liberal approaches, such as alignment, have been proposed. However, both approaches can only detect but cannot explain why there ar...

In the study of residential satisfaction in architectural design different physical comfort domains have received the most attention. But with this comfort-driven approach, residential satisfaction is reduced to a psychophysical relationship. Adding psychological substance to the design process, the paper argues that a distinction should be made be...

Introduction: Long-term psychodynamic/psychoanalytic psychotherapy (LTPP) is a prevalent treatment option for complex mental disorders. Yet, little is known about the role of treatment intensity in LTPP. We present a study protocol for a systematic review and individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis aggregating and analysing individual data...

In this article, Gorodzeisky, Semyonov, Davidov and Schmidt suggest that perceived economic threat, perceived threat to the cultural homogeneity of society, and racial prejudice, although being interrelated, each exerts an independent influence on opposition to immigration. The analysis use data obtained from six representative national samples of...

Besides climate change, the loss of biodiversity due to human activities marks another planetary boundary that we are currently crossing. Cross-culturally invariant measurement instruments are urgently needed to monitor and evaluate the effects of global and national programmes to halt further biodiversity loss. Based on data from Brazil, China, Co...

Purpose Mental distress has become a major public health concern. Temporal trends in psychological distress are complex and depend on numerous factors. In this study, we examined age-period-cohort effects for mental distress including gender and German region over a 15 years’ time span. Methods Data on mental distress from ten cross-sectional surv...

The extensive literature on the contact hypothesis reports a positive association between intergroup contact and outgroup attitudes, yet it remains unknown whether this association reflects within-person (i.e., situational changes within individuals) or between-person (i.e., stable differences between individuals) effects. To investigate this quest...

This review summarizes the current state of the art of statistical and (survey) methodological research on measurement (non)invariance, which is considered a core challenge for the comparative social sciences. After outlining the historical roots, conceptual details, and standard procedures for measurement invariance testing, the paper focuses in p...

In this paper, the central research question discusses to what extent logical positivism or critical theory forms the methodological core of the seminal work on the authoritarian personality. A central thesis is that due to her background in psychology, logical positivism and psychoanalysis and her neglected but central role in the authoritarian pe...

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between a person’s psychological distress, subjective physical health and their attitudes towards the COVID-19 pandemic. The evaluation was performed on the basis of data from two waves of the Saxon Longitudinal Study, carried out in 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2021. The number of study participants in bot...

Social networking sites have become a predominant means of communication across the globe. Activities on these sites generate massive amounts of personal information and raise concerns about its potential abuse. Means designed to protect the user’s privacy and prevent exploitation of confidential data often go unused. In this study, we draw on the...

Modern theories of authoritarianism have stressed the importance of threat to the expression of authoritarian attitudes and intolerance. Arguably, authoritarian tendencies may have increased during COVID-19 pandemic, a major threat to life and security. One issue arising when comparing mean scores is that of measurement invariance. Meaningful compa...

Purpose Cross-sectional studies found high levels of depression and anxiety symptoms, and loneliness during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reported increases were lower in longitudinal population-based findings. Studies including positive outcomes are rare. This study analyzed changes in mental health symptoms, loneliness, and satisfactio...

Conceptually, “group-focused enmity” (GFE, long-term project in Germany, duration: 2002–2011) consists of several different attitudes that constitute a syndrome of group-focused enmity. These attitudes are empirically related to each other and share a common core which is the ideology of inequality. But is GFE really a one-dimensional homogeneous i...

The contact hypothesis proposes that intergroup contact improves outgroup attitudes. Existing cross-sectional and longitudinal studies provide valuable insights into the association between contact and attitudes, but are mostly uninformative regarding within-person and between-person effects. To investigate such effects, we applied (random-intercep...

Welzel et al. (2021) claim that non-invariance of instruments is inconclusive and inconsequential in the field for cross-cultural value measurement. In this response, we contend that several key arguments on which Welzel et al. (2021) base their critique of invariance testing are conceptually and statistically incorrect. First, Welzel et al. (2021)...

Group-focused enmity (GFE) and related research have mostly focused on variable-centred analyses such as structural equation modelling and factor analysis, implicitly assuming that the results apply uniformly to all participants in the sample. Person-centred research questions and analysis methods, which investigate unobserved heterogeneity in the...

Successful campaigns to combat the COVID-19 pandemic depend, in part, on people's willingness to be vaccinated. It is therefore critical to understand the factors that determine people's vaccination intentions. We applied a reasoned action approach - the theory of planned behavior - to explore these factors. We used data from an online survey of ad...

Associations between family income and child developmental outcomes are well documented. However, family income is not static but changes over time. Although this volatility represents income shocks that are likely to affect children’s lives, very few studies have so far examined its effect on early cognitive development. This study investigated as...

Many researchers subscribe to the three‐component conceptualization of attitudes, the idea that attitudes have cognitive, affective, and behavioural (intentional) components. Yet, these components are rarely considered simultaneously in scales, especially those measuring attitudes towards refugees. Moreover, it is debated how these components relat...

Objective: This study applied the theory of reasoned goal pursuit (TRGP) in predicting physical activity among Australian undergraduate students, providing the first empirical test of the model.Methods: The research comprised an elicitation study (N = 25; MAge= 25.76, SDAge= 11.33, 20 female, 5 male) to identify readily accessible procurement and...

Left-right political auto-identification has been used widely in socio-political research to interpret and organize political attitudes and opinions. In this paper we analyse whether the meaning of left-right orientation is the same in Eastern Europe and Western Europe. Using data from two big European survey programmes, European Social Survey and...

Else Frenkel-Brunswik (1908–1958) may be known to some as one of the co-authors of the famous study The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor W. Adorno and others. However, as was the case with other Austrian sociologists such as Marie Jahoda and Maria Hertz Levinson, Frenkel-Brunswik’s role in empirical research remained seldom discussed in later r...

Many key concepts in the social sciences (e.g., personality traits, values, beliefs, attitudes, cognitive competencies) are not directly observable but represent latent variables, measured by a set of observable variables called manifest indicators (Bollen, 2002). Furthermore, major contributions to longitudinal statistical modeling and the improve...

Objective Researchers are increasingly using parental report measures in population-based surveys of violence against children. No research thus far has examined the factor structure of the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN) Child Abuse Screening Tool Parent Version (ICAST-P), a non-commercialized measure f...

The present contribution advances the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as a parsimonious conceptual framework for predicting, explaining, and changing individual choice of travel mode. Meta-analytic syntheses of empirical research provide support for the theory across a wide array of behavioral domains. When applied to travel mode choice, the theor...

In a paper published as early as 1987 by Jagodzinski, Kühnel and Schmidt on attitude measurement in a three wave panel study, we established empirically a general orientation toward foreign employees in Western Germany called “Gastarbeiter”. These items have been continuously used from 1980 till now in the ALLBUS studies (Wasmer and Hochman 2019)....

In many countries farmers face pressure to adopt practices to promote sustainability and resilience while ensuring efficient business management to produce food and other agricultural products at reasonable cost. Given a policy context in which voluntary action is preferred over government regulation, understanding farmers' motivation to embrace re...

There has been a significant increase in cross-national and longitudinal data production in social science research in recent decades. Before drawing substantive conclusions based on cross-national and longitudinal survey data, researchers need to assess whether the constructs are measured in the same way across countries and time-points. If cross-...

This editorial gives a brief introduction to the articles included in the thematic section of Europe's Journal of Psychology, which is devoted to selected recent advances and applications of the theory of planned behavior (TPB). The five contributions address two thematic streams: (1) adjustments and extensions of the original theory and (2) applic...

Objective: Violence against children is a global public health concern. Researchers are increasingly using self-report measures of physical, psychological, and sexual violence and neglect for population-based surveys. The current gold-standard measure, the 45-item ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tool has been used across the world. This study assesses...

Multi-group Bayesian structural equation modeling (MG-BSEM) gained considerable attention among substantive researchers investigating cross-group differences and methodologists exploring challenges in measurement invariance testing. MG-BSEM allows for greater flexibility by applying elastic rather than strict equality constraints on item parameters...

Die Demokratie in Deutschland steht unter Druck: Soziale und kulturelle Ungleichheit, Fremdenfeindlichkeit und Antisemitismus sowie von vielen Seiten infrage gestellte demokratische Grundwerte machen es notwendig, Vereinigungs- und Integrationsprozesse nach 1989 von Neuem zu beleuchten. Im Dialog zwischen Theorie und empirischer Analyse vermessen d...

Die Demokratie in Deutschland steht unter Druck: Soziale und kulturelle Ungleichheit, Fremdenfeindlichkeit und Antisemitismus sowie von vielen Seiten infrage gestellte demokratische Grundwerte machen es notwendig, Vereinigungs- und Integrationsprozesse nach 1989 von Neuem zu beleuchten. Im Dialog zwischen Theorie und empirischer Analyse vermessen d...

Immigration has been one of the most crucial global phenomena, changing the fabric of many societies, and a topic of substantial research. Much of this research has focused on how the host society views immigrants and immigration, or on the societal factors influencing the latter. The goal of this thematic issue is to present different studies focu...

For decades, migration to Germany has been a relevant social phenomenon resulting in an increasing share of foreigners and Germans with migration background in the German populace. Additionally, since 2015, Germany has experienced a substantial increase in the immigration of people seeking refuge and asylum from civil war, economic and environmenta...

Background: To examine psychopathology present under prolonged antipsychotic treatment in schizophrenia and to analyse their relationship to both the duration of the prodromal stage (DPS; time between onset of first unspecific psychological symptoms and first schizophrenic symptoms) and the duration of untreated psychosis (DUP; time between the on...

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This chapter briefly describes the design and application of the item count technique (ICT), also known as the list experiment, in population‐level survey research. The purpose of ICT is to measure what might otherwise be masked. The intuition of the technique is rooted in the manipulation of the amount of anonymity guaranteed to respondents. As wi...

In two remote regions in the Caucasus (Georgia), the tourism sector gains importance as a source of income. Based on the theory of planned behaviour ( Ajzen, 1991 ), a structural equation model was applied to explore the factors that determine the intentions of private households to enhance their activities in the tourism sector. The strongest infl...

The left-right political auto-identification has been used widely in the socio-political research for interpreting and organizing political attitudes and opinions. In this paper we analyse whether the meaning of the left-right orientation is the same in Eastern and Western Europe after the transformation in 1989. Using data from two big European su...

Comparisons of means or associations between theoretical constructs of interest in cross-national comparative research assume measurement invariance, that is, that the same constructs are measured in the same way across the various nations under study. While it is intuitive, this assumption needs to be statistically tested. An increasing number of...

Die Integration von Migranten in Deutschland, aber auch in der gesamten Welt, stellt eine der zentralen gesellschaftlichen Herausforderungen dar (vergl. Heath et al. 2019). Sie ist sehr stark von gesetzlichen Rahmenbedingungen 2 , gesellschaftlichem Klima (Green et al. 2018, Hadler et al. 2018), aber auch von den Erfahrungen der Mehrheitsbevölkerun...

The current study examines the following questions: (1) the extent to which individual basic human values are linked with attitudes towards immigration; (2) whether symbolic threat by immigration mediates this relation; and (3) whether cultural values moderate the relations between individual values, threat, and attitudes towards immigration. The e...

Explaining negative attitudes towards immigration in general and threat due to immigration, in particular, has been a major topic of study in recent decades. While intergroup contact has received considerable attention in explaining ethnic threat, group relative deprivation (GRD), that is, feelings that one’s group is unfairly deprived of desirable...

Several structural equation modeling (SEM) strategies were developed for assessing measurement invariance (MI) across groups relaxing the assumptions of strict MI to partial, approximate, and partial approximate MI. Nonetheless, applied researchers still do not know if and under what conditions these strategies might provide results that allow for...

This paper sheds new light on the unobtrusive measure known as the list experiment or unmatched count technique. Proponents of this method claim that it detects social desirability bias in responses to sensitive questions in surveys. The logic of this method is quite straightforward. After a critical overview of the theory, logic, and empirical res...

Comparisons of means or associations between theoretical constructs of interest in cross-national comparative research assume measurement invariance, that is, that the same constructs are measured in the same way across the various nations under study. While it is intuitive, this assumption needs to be statistically tested. An increasing number of...

Die politik- und sozialwissenschaftliche Literatur zum Themenkomplex Legitimität ist umfangreich wie vielfältig. Weiterhin sind die empirisch-deskriptiven sowie normativ-ethischen Legitimitätskonzeptionen äußerst heterogen. Dies gilt sowohl für die Begriffe selbst als auch deren Verwendung als wissenschaftliche Termini. So verwundert es kaum, dass...

This work uses a list experiment to directly test for differences in attitudes towards poor, racially different and racially similar immigrants to the Netherlands in terms of (1) overt support and (2) covert support and (3) the difference between the two (i.e., social desirability bias). Results show that the expression of opposition to immigrants...

This chapter tests empirically the effects of left-right political orientation, deprivation, values and racist attitudes on attitudes towards migrants, cultural (CT) and economic threat (ET) and party identification with the AfD in Eastern and Western Germany 1 and with PiS in Poland 2 . The simultaneous effects of demographic variables such as rel...

This chapter focuses on a practical analysis of the Bayesian approximate measurement invariance model using standard software. It introduces the concept of approximate measurement invariance and illustrates the use of its most basic variant. The chapter discusses the use of measurement invariance testing in latent variable measurement models. In su...

Background Nutritional iron deficiency is one of the leading factors for disease, disability and death. A quasi-experimental randomized community study in South-West Nigeria explored whether a branded behaviour change programme increased the use of green leafy vegetables (greens) and iron-fortified bouillon cubes in stews for improved iron intake....

Research on intergroup contact has mostly viewed desegregation as a necessary condition for contact to unfold its power to reduce prejudice. Through residential and school choices, however, prejudice also contributes to segregation. To shed light on this bidirectional link, we conducted two survey-based experiments with stratified quota samples of...

Child abuse prevention research has been hampered by a lack of validated multi-dimensional non-proprietary instruments, sensitive enough to measure change in abuse victimization or behavior. This study aimed to adapt the ICAST child abuse self-report measure (parent and child) for use in intervention studies and to investigate the psychometric prop...