Seminar by Dr. Jana Kiralj Lacković, Assistant professor at the division of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, University of Zagreb

Are Environmental Psychology Scales Comparable Across Countries? Testing Measurement Invariance in Four European Nations

Between-country comparisons are a vital avenue for understanding key psychological phenomena. Being able to say that respondents from one country show higher levels of environmental attitudes than those from another, and to contextualise these differences, forms the basis for the adaptive design of programmes and interventions.

But what happens when the same phenomenon is interpreted in fundamentally different ways across countries, creating a measurement problem before between-country comparisons are even attempted? How do we know we are comparing apples with apples, and not apples with oranges?

In this seminar, we will explore measurement invariance as a lens for uncovering meaningful differences in the way multiple groups interact with the constructs we measure. We will examine how key scales in environmental psychology behave across Croatia, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden, and what this tells us about the cross-cultural validity of our research tool

About dr. Jana Kiralj Lacković

Jana Kiralj Lacković is an environmental and social psychologist and Assistant Professor at the School of Landscape Architecture, University of Zagreb Faculty of Agriculture. She holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Zagreb. Her doctoral research focused on the socio-psychological integration of refugees and receiving communities, with expertise in cross-cultural research and advanced quantitative methods. She contributed to major international projects, including the EU-wide ADJUST study on resilience during COVID-19 and the FOCUS project on refugee integration across Europe and Jordan. Jana currently works at the intersection of social and environmental psychology, with research interests spanning pro-environmental behaviour, values, nature connectedness, environmental identity, and place attachment. She is actively involved in the ActGREEN and ARCADIA (Horizon Europe) projects, contributing to cross-national data collection and analysis. She teaches Environmental Psychology, Research Methodology, Statistics, and Psychology of Sustainable Behaviour across three University of Zagreb faculties. Her work is grounded in the Value-Belief-Norm Theory, Theory of Planned Behaviour, and social identity frameworks. Jana is particularly interested in the cross-cultural validity of psychological measurement tools – the focus of her upcoming seminar. She brings to her research and teaching a commitment to bridging rigorous methodology with real-world environmental challenges.