2008/01/09 by Scott D Swain, Scott D. Swain, Danny Weathers +2 · 31 citations
Mathematics · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Acquiescence #Behavioral Health and Interventions #Cognition #Developmental psychology #Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies #Item response theory #Likert scale #Mathematics #Psychology #Psychometrics #Respondent #Scale (ratio) #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Social psychology #Statistics
paper · open access · doi:10.1509/jmkr.45.1.116
published in Journal of Marketing Research 45(1), 116-131 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2008/01/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Data collected through multi-item Likert scales that contain reversed items often exhibit problems, such as unexpected factor structures and diminished scale reliabilities. These problems arise when respondents select responses on the same side of the scale neutral point for both reversed and nonreversed items, a phenomenon the authors call "misresponse." Across four experiments and an exploratory study using published data, the authors find that misresponse to reversed Likert items averaged approximately 20%, twice the level identified as problematic in previous simulation studies. Counter to prevailing thought, the patterns of misresponse and response latency across manipulated items could not be attributed to respondent inattention or acquiescence. Instead, the pattern supports an item verification difficulty explanation, which holds that task complexity, and thus misresponse and response latency, increases with the number of cognitive operations required for a respondent to compare a scale item with his or her belief. The observed results are well explained by the constituent comparison model. © 2008, American Marketing Association.