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Effects Of Negative Keying And Wording In Attitude Measures: A Mixed-Methods Study, Chris M. Coleman

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Researchers often collect data on attitudes using “balanced” measurement scales—that is, scales with comparable numbers of positive and negative (i.e., reverse-scored) items. Many previous measurement studies have found the inclusion of negative items to be detrimental to scale reliability and validity. However, these studies have rarely distinguished among negatively-worded items, negatively-keyed items, and items with negative wording and keying. The purpose of the current study was to make those distinctions and investigate why the psychometric properties of balanced scales tend to be worse than those of scales with uniformly positive wording/keying. A mixed-methods approach was employed. In Study 1 (quantitative), …