Abstract
The Emigration Attitudes Scale (EAS) is a psychometric instrument developed by Diana Bakalova and Tsvetelina Panchelieva in 2023 to assess attitudes toward geographic relocation and permanent emigration among young adults. Developed as part of an investigation into the psychological precursors of youth mobility in post-communist Eastern Europe, the instrument specifically captures how dispositional characteristics—namely risk propensity—influence the propensity to leave one’s home country. Grounded in extensive qualitative calendar interviews conducted across urban, suburban, and rural regions in Bulgaria, the scale was iteratively refined and translated using a rigorous committee back-translation protocol validated by independent experts.
The resulting 5-item unidimensional scale measures an integrated psychological orientation toward cross-border migration. Administered electronically via a 5-point Likert-type response format ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), the EAS demonstrates robust psychometric properties. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) confirms a strictly unidimensional factor structure, with a single latent dimension explaining 64.65% of the total cumulative variance. The scale exhibits high internal consistency reliability, evidenced by a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .86. Furthermore, evidence of convergent and external validity was established through its associations with domain-specific risk-taking behaviors, demonstrating that higher willingness to assume social risk significantly predicts more favorable emigration attitudes. Differential predictive patterns emerged across generational cohorts, revealing stronger predictive power for Millennials compared to Zoomers (Generation Z). The EAS provides an empirically validated, brief, and reliable assessment tool for researchers in social psychology, sociology, demography, and public policy seeking to evaluate migration intentions during emerging adulthood.
Keywords
Emigration Attitudes Scale, migration intentions, emerging adulthood, Millennials, Zoomers, Generation Z, risk propensity, social risk, brain drain, youth mobility, psychometrics, Bulgaria
Authors
The Emigration Attitudes Scale was conceptualized, developed, and validated by researchers at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences:
- Diana Bakalova, PhD — Associate Professor, Institute for Population and Human Studies, Department of Psychology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria.
ORCID: 0000-0002-3366-6402.
Email: [email protected].
Correspondence Address: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Population and Human Studies, Department of Psychology, Ul. Akad. Georgi Bonchev 6, Sofia 1113, Bulgaria. - Tsvetelina Panchelieva, PhD — Assistant Professor, Institute for Population and Human Studies, Department of Psychology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria.
ORCID: 0000-0002-8846-6483.
Purpose
The Emigration Attitudes Scale (EAS) was developed to quantitatively assess attitudes toward international emigration among young people, with a specific focus on emerging adults and individuals in their thirties representing the Millennial and Zoomer (Generation Z) cohorts. In many Central and Eastern European nations, the phenomenon of youth emigration—frequently conceptualized as “brain drain” or human capital flight—presents substantial socioeconomic, demographic, and political challenges. Despite the societal importance of migratory flows, psychological research has historically lacked brief, psychometrically sound, and culturally validated instruments capable of capturing emigration attitudes as distinct psychological dispositions before actual behavioral enactment occurs.
From a theoretical standpoint, emigration is not merely an economic calculation; it is a complex developmental decision deeply intertwined with personality attributes, subjective evaluations of domestic versus foreign opportunities, and willingness to tolerate uncertainty. The primary research objective of Bakalova and Panchelieva (2023) was to clarify how stable personality traits, particularly generalized and domain-specific risk propensity, act as antecedents of emigration readiness. Because relocation to an unfamiliar cultural and institutional environment entails substantial psychological, social, and financial disruption, positive attitudes toward emigration reflect an individual’s psychological openness to disruption and change.
The EAS serves multiple purposes across academic, institutional, and clinical settings:
- Demographic and Policy Research: It enables demographers, economists, and sociologists to gauge potential migratory pressures and identify the psychological profiles of young citizens most inclined to leave their country of origin.
- Generational Cohort Comparisons: The scale provides a standardized measurement baseline to investigate how distinct socioeconomic, digital, and geopolitical conditions shape the migratory mindsets of Millennials (who grew up during post-socialist transition and early EU integration) versus Zoomers (digital natives who experienced full European mobility and modern global crises).
- Youth Counseling and Career Guidance: Counselors working in higher education can utilize the EAS to explore vocational aspirations, international mobility expectations, and the psychological costs of separation from family and home environments.
- Psychometric Modeling of Mobility Decisions: The instrument facilitates structural equation modeling and regression analyses examining how macro-level factors (economic indicators, institutional trust) interact with micro-level psychological traits (risk-taking, life satisfaction, identity development) to predict actual migratory behavior.
Psychological Construct
The psychological construct assessed by the instrument is Emigration Attitudes. In social psychological literature, an attitude is traditionally understood as a psychological tendency expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor, encompassing cognitive, affective, and conative (behavioral intention) dimensions (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). The EAS operationalizes this construct as a unified psychological disposition reflecting the desirability, personal relevance, and intended pursuit of relocation abroad.
Rather than conceptualizing emigration solely as a discrete, future behavioral event (“Will you move abroad in the next 12 months?”), the EAS treats emigration attitudes as a latent psychological stance. This construct captures several interrelated facets:
- Cognitive Appraisal of Living Abroad: The evaluative belief that life, professional development, and personal fulfillment outside one’s native country are superior, more promising, or preferable to remaining in the domestic environment. Individuals with favorable emigration attitudes hold positive cognitive expectations regarding the returns on migration.
- Affective Orientation Toward Cross-Border Relocation: The emotional readiness and positive affective valence attached to the prospect of living in a foreign environment, contrasted with feelings of stagnation, frustration, or emotional detachment from the native sociopolitical milieu.
- Conative and Intentional Openness: A declared readiness to consider, plan, or execute an international move. While the scale does not measure logistical preparations (e.g., securing visas or booking flights), it captures the decisive motivational threshold where an individual actively entertains emigration as a viable personal life strategy.
By measuring emigration attitudes as a continuous latent trait, the EAS overcomes the limitations of dichotomous behavioral intention items. It accounts for individuals who harbor strong, favorable inclinations toward emigration but are constrained by structural barriers, as well as those who are firmly rooted in their home country and reject the prospect of relocation regardless of external incentives.
Theoretical Framework
The Emigration Attitudes Scale is situated at the intersection of several influential frameworks in social psychology, personality theory, and developmental science:
1. The Theory of Planned Behavior
Under Icek Ajzen’s (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), human action is guided by behavioral beliefs (which produce favorable or unfavorable attitudes toward the behavior), normative beliefs (subjective norms), and control beliefs (perceived behavioral control). These elements combine to form behavioral intentions, which serve as the proximal antecedent of actual behavior. The EAS directly operationalizes the attitudinal component of this model—specifically, the global evaluative posture toward leaving one’s country of origin. According to the TPB framework, individuals who maintain strongly favorable emigration attitudes are significantly more likely to form explicit emigration intentions and subsequently engage in preparatory migratory behaviors.
2. Domain-Specific Risk Propensity Theory
Emigration inherently involves navigating high levels of uncertainty, disruption of established social support networks, financial commitments, and potential status loss. Consequently, emigration decision-making is closely tied to risk perception and risk tolerance. Bakalova and Panchelieva drew upon the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) framework formulated by Weber, Blais, and Betz (2002). This framework posits that risk propensity is not a monolithic trait; rather, individuals exhibit variable willingness to take risks across distinct domains, including ethical, financial, health/safety, recreational, and social domains. In the context of emigration, social risk—the willingness to navigate interpersonal disruptions, forge relationships in unfamiliar cultural contexts, and face social rejection—serves as a primary psychological driver of positive emigration attitudes.
3. Emerging Adulthood and Life Course Theory
The scale was developed with explicit reference to Jeffrey Jensen Arnett’s (2000) theory of emerging adulthood (ages 18–29), a developmental phase characterized by identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between, and a profound sense of life possibilities. During this period, individuals possess fewer institutional commitments (such as homeownership or established family obligations), making them particularly responsive to international mobility opportunities. The EAS also extends into early adulthood (the thirties), allowing researchers to observe how the consolidation of adult roles affects the stability or attenuation of emigration desires.
4. Generational Cohort Theory
Grounded in the sociological insights of Karl Mannheim and subsequent generational theorists, the EAS accounts for differing historical and socioeconomic contexts. Bulgarian Millennials (born roughly between 1981 and 1996) came of age during the turbulent post-communist transition, financial crises, and the nation’s 2007 accession to the European Union. Conversely, Zoomers (Generation Z, born 1997 to 2012) grew up in an interconnected, digitally native, and fully integrated European landscape. These contrasting developmental backgrounds influence how risk propensity translates into attitudes toward cross-border relocation.
Validity
The psychometric validation of the Emigration Attitudes Scale involved extensive qualitative, content, convergent, and predictive procedures described by Bakalova and Panchelieva (2023):
Content and Translation Validity
Scale construction commenced with comprehensive literature reviews and qualitative analysis of data obtained from semi-structured calendar interviews conducted between June and November 2020. The qualitative cohort comprised young Bulgarian men and women aged 18 to 35 sampled across diverse demographic strata, including major metropolitan centers (e.g., Sofia), medium-sized towns, and small rural villages. This sampling ensured that the initial item pool reflected authentic contemporary discourse regarding emigration, rather than purely academic assumptions.
To establish cross-linguistic and semantic equivalence, all formulated items underwent a rigorous committee back-translation process. The items were independently translated between Bulgarian and English and subsequently scrutinized by two independent psychological experts. Items displaying ambiguity, idiomatic confusion, or cultural bias were adjusted to guarantee semantic and conceptual clarity.
Construct and Factorial Validity
Construct validity was demonstrated through exploratory multivariate analyses. When the 5-item inventory was administered to the validation sample of young adults aged 18 to 35, the items demonstrated high communality and converged onto a single, robust factor without multidimensional cross-loadings or structural fragmentation (accounting for 64.65% of the total variance).
Convergent and Predictive Validity
External and convergent validity was established by examining the theoretical linkage between emigration attitudes and risk-taking propensity, assessed using established psychometric measures of risk. The empirical findings demonstrated that:
- Risk propensity serves as a statistically significant positive predictor of favorable emigration attitudes among young Bulgarians. Individuals with higher general tolerance for risk reported significantly greater willingness to emigrate.
- Domain-specific analysis confirmed that the social risk domain was the most robust and consistent predictor of emigration attitudes. Willingness to navigate social uncertainty directly supported positive appraisals of international relocation.
- Generational moderation was observed: While risk propensity significantly predicted emigration attitudes across both cohorts, the predictive magnitude was substantially stronger for Millennials than for Zoomers. For Millennials, taking social risks was closely aligned with cross-border aspirations, whereas Zoomers exhibited a more diffuse pattern, likely reflecting their innate socialization in an already borderless, digitalized European sphere.
Reliability
The internal consistency reliability of the Emigration Attitudes Scale was evaluated within its target population of young adults aged 18 to 35 years in Bulgaria. The scale demonstrated excellent internal consistency, yielding a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .86.
In classical test theory, an alpha coefficient exceeding .80 for a brief, 5-item instrument indicates strong inter-item relatedness and minimal measurement error, while remaining below .90, which confirms that the items are not excessively redundant or tautological. Given that Cronbach’s alpha is sensitive to scale length—with shorter scales typically producing lower coefficients—the observed value of .86 underscores the psychometric efficiency of the EAS items. The high degree of internal consistency suggests that the 5 items reliably measure the same underlying construct, justifying the calculation of a composite or mean index score for both research and diagnostic applications.
Factor Analysis
To examine the internal structural architecture of the 5-item scale, Bakalova and Panchelieva (2023) conducted a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on the administration data.
The empirical extraction results revealed a clear, unambiguous unidimensional solution:
- Number of Extracted Components: Exactly one principal component satisfied standard extraction criteria (eigenvalue greater than 1.0 according to the Kaiser-Guttman criterion, supported by scree plot inspection).
- Variance Explained: The single extracted factor, designated as “Emigration Attitudes,” accounted for 64.65% of the total cumulative variance in the item set. In behavioral science measurement, a single factor explaining nearly two-thirds of the total variance provides definitive evidence of unidimensionality.
- Item Loadings: All 5 items demonstrated strong, positive factor loadings on this solitary component, confirming that each item functions as a reliable marker of the general latent construct.
- Absence of Secondary Dimensions: No secondary components met the threshold for retention, and forced two-component solutions failed to yield meaningful or theoretically defensible sub-dimensions.
These factor analytic findings indicate that emigration attitudes, as captured by the EAS, operate as a coherent psychological construct rather than an agglomeration of disparate, unrelated beliefs.
Instrument / Measurement Tool
- Test Type: Original psychometric rating scale (self-report questionnaire).
- Format: Brief 5-item unidimensional inventory. Responses are recorded electronically on a 5-point Likert-type scale:
- 1 = Strongly disagree
- 2 = Disagree
- 3 = Neither agree nor disagree (Neutral)
- 4 = Agree
- 5 = Strongly agree
- Item Count: 5 items.
- Administration Mode: Electronic / Computer-assisted self-administered survey (compatible with web-based testing platforms).
- Languages Available: English and Bulgarian (developed simultaneously via committee back-translation).
- Target Population: Human adults aged 18 years and older, with primary validation conducted on emerging adults and young adults aged 18 to 35 (Millennials and Zoomers/Generation Z).
- Administration Time: Approximately 2 to 3 minutes.
- Scoring Methodology: A total composite score can be derived by summing the responses across all 5 items (ranging from 5 to 25), or an average mean score can be computed (ranging from 1.0 to 5.0). Higher scores correspond to more favorable, pronounced attitudes toward emigration.
Permissions & Fee and Test Year
- Test Year: 2023.
- Permissions: The scale is protected by academic copyright. Researchers wishing to use, reproduce, or adapt the Emigration Attitudes Scale for scholarly or institutional research must contact the corresponding author:
Diana Bakalova, PhD ([email protected]), Institute for Population and Human Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. - Commercial Use: The instrument is not authorized for commercial use or proprietary profit-generating applications.
- Fee: There is no fee required for academic, scholarly, or non-commercial research use, contingent upon obtaining author consent and providing proper academic attribution.
References
- Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T
- Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55(5), 469–480. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.5.469
- Bakalova, D., & Panchelieva, T. (2023). Risk propensity as a personality antecedent of emigration attitudes among Bulgarian Millennials and Zoomers. European Journal of Psychology Open, 82(2), 57–68. https://doi.org/10.1024/2673-8627/a000037
- Eagly, A. H., & Chaiken, S. (1993). The psychology of attitudes. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.
- Lee, E. S. (1966). A theory of migration. Demography, 3(1), 47–57. https://doi.org/10.2307/2060063
- Weber, E. U., Blais, A. R., & Betz, N. E. (2002). A domain-specific risk-attitude scale: Measuring risk perceptions and risk behaviors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 15(4), 263–290. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.414