Country reputation management: developing a scale for measuring the reputation of four African countries in the United States

Abstract

This study extends the development of country reputation measurement to other cultural contexts, specifically among sub-Saharan African countries that have shown the desire to improve their reputation in the United States and other Western nations. Although effective management of a country’s reputation lies in its ability to measure the perceptions of its target publics, there is currently no established scale that can be relied upon for such measurement of sub-Saharan African countries. In this study, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted using second-order latent variables, and based on the goodness-of-fit indices, it was established that all four models for measuring the reputation of four countries—Angola, Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria—met the data fit criteria, thus validating the instrument. Validation of this scale provides empirical evidence that contributes to public diplomacy and country reputation management. Because the CFA process used in this study allows for replication of measurements across independent samples, practitioners interested in measuring the reputation of sub-Saharan African countries can use this scale to evaluate the reputation of these countries across samples of interest.