Gender Differences in Right Wing Extremism: Intergroup Validity of a Second-Order Construct

Gender differences are found in most studies on right-wing extremism, but explanations for this phenomenon are not clear. A number of authors take gender-specific differences in the expression of right-wing extremism as grounds for arguing that such orientations are not measured adequately among women. The result is a major problem in the interpretation of intergroup differences: Are such differences real, or are they caused by other influences or biases? From a methodological viewpoint, one could argue that this is a problem of equivalence of meaning. Our data are taken from a study of youths conducted in West Germany in 1991. Integrating considerations of cross-cultural research, we show that gender differences in right-wing extremism are found even after controlling for the influence of different modes of expression (in statistical terms) of nonequivalent measurement instruments.