The world beyond rating scales: Why we should think more carefully about the response format in questionnaires.

Researchers constructing a new questionnaire think very carefully about a lot of things: the construct definition, the target population, the wording of the items, the item selection, and so on. These are all explicit steps in the test construction process as it is described by textbooks and research articles (Clark & Watson, 1995; Simms, 2008; Ziegler, 2014). One aspect that appears to receive less attention is the choice of response format. When the questionnaire is a self-report (or other-report) measure of one or more psychological constructs, test constructors appear to automatically implement a rating scale such as strongly disagree to strongly agree as the response format. The reason for this is that rating scales have served us well in the past and continue to do so. However, in this editorial we will argue that choosing the response format should be an explicit step in the test construction process that deserves special attention and considerable thought. In fact, the response format should be chosen to fit the construct best. We will also argue that we need a greater diversity of response formats and more research on them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)
Source: European Journal of Psychological Assessment - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research