Validating the Psychological Entitlement Scale (PES) in older adults and testing its cross-age measurement invariance

Psychological entitlement is often associated with maladaptive traits and negative behaviors and leads to interpersonal problems. This study examined the validity of the Psychological Entitlement Scale (PES) in the older adult population and its equivalence across age groups. In Study 1, we surveyed 1826 older adults. and conducted item analysis, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), Cronbach’s alpha, and McDonald’s omega.

Building on Study 1, we surveyed an additional sample of 3730 adults and 2374 emerging adults in Study 2 to examine the measurement invariance of the PES across the adult lifespan. EFA extracted a single factor explaining 70.91% of the variance, with factor loadings ranging from 0.75 to 0.88 and communalities from 0.56 to 0.78. CFA showed that the single-factor model fit well (χ²/df = 4.821, RMSEA = 0.067, SRMR = 0.018, CFI = 0.988, IFI = 0.988, TLI = 0.978).

In Study 2, we found that the PES exhibits measurement equivalence across different age groups. Moreover, the psychological privilege of older adults is significantly higher than that of adults and emerging adults. The PES has good reliability and validity and can be used as a valid tool to assess the psychological privilege of Chinese older adults.

We appreciate all participants for supporting this study. This study was supported by the General Project of the National Social Science Fund of China in Education: “Research on Paths and Mechanisms of Integrating Vocational Education and Continuing Education to Serve the Ageing Society” (Grant No. Zhiguang Fan, Xinchang Lu & Aleksandra Georgieva Jilin International Studies University, Changchun, China East China Normal University, Shanghai, China The authors declare no competing interests.

This study follows the Helsinki Declaration. The survey was completed between January 2023 and September 2024. Before the investigation, the investigators introduced the purpose, anonymity and confidentiality of the study to the participants in detail, and obtained their informed consent, which was approved by the Ethics Committee of Jilin International Studies University (approval number: JY202211003) on November 5, 2022.

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