Sociological Methods &Research, Ahead of Print.
The study addresses the effects of piloting methods on the cross-cultural comparability and reliability of the measurement of gender and age stereotypes. We conducted a summative evaluation of expert reviews, cognitive pretests and web probing. We first piloted a gender role, an ageism, and a children stereotypes instrument in German and American English. We then randomly assigned the original and piloted versions to respondents in Germany and the United States using an online survey experiment and quota samples. No configural invariance was shown by the original instruments and the reliability of the gender role instrument was insufficiently low. The results show that piloting methods increased reliability and improved measurement invariance, although the effects varied by topic. Cross-cultural expert reviews and web probing provided more consistent results than other methods. A combination of web probing and cross-cultural expert reviews can maximize both reliability and measurement invariance.