A Cross-Cultural Validation of the Territorial Functioning Construct in Residential Neighbourhoods: A Multigroup Invariance Analysis

One popular use of design strategies for crime prevention is territorial functioning (TF). While the TF scale has been widely utilised in crime studies, there is a lack of empirical evidence to support the equivalence of the scale across diverse contexts. A sample of 416 inhabitants from Britain and Malaysia took part in the study. We examined the factor structure validity and invariance of the TF scale instrument within the two nations based on a multigroup analysis of invariance. The results indicated that confirmatory factor analytic models of the constructs exhibited an adequate fit according to multiple criteria within each sample and across samples. The results further indicated full support of configural invariance and partial support of metric and scalar invariance. Multigroup latent mean analysis revealed significant group mean differences in territorial attitude, indicating that Malaysian residents perceived a significantly higher territorial attitude than British residents.