Measurement invariance of a reading literacy scale in the Italian Context: a psychometric analysis

The purpose of this study was to examine the factor structure and the measurement invariance of a reading literacy scale in the Italian context. The subjects are Italian pupils who took part in Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2006. A confirmatory factor analysis approach was used and a full measurement invariance model was assessed. Results showed that the reading literacy is a factorially valid measure with metric invariance across gender and students with different immigration background. Results also suggested possible limitations of using PIRLS 2006 data when making within-country comparisons.