Measuring and understanding the nature of informant/rater effects and differences (Level 1) on a common trait when the target of measurement is at the organizational level (Level 2) involves a number of methodological considerations. Although previous research has discussed single-level latent variable applications of the correlated…

School-level contextual factors have been found to influence reports of school climate. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the extent to which these associations are related to the school climate traits being measured or the methods (i.e., informants) used to obtain them. Data from a multilevel multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) design in…

The use of multiple informants is common in assessments that rely on the judgments of others. However, ratings obtained from different informants often vary as a function of their perspectives and roles in relation to the target of measurement, and causes unrelated to the trait being measured. We illustrate the usefulness of a latent variable…

The numerous advantages of structural equation modeling (SEM) for the analysis of multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) data are well known. MTMM-SEMs allow researchers to explicitly model the measurement error, to examine the true convergent and discriminant validity of the given measures, and to relate external variables to the latent trait as well as…