IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rug/rugwps/10-636.html

The effect of rating scale format on response styles: The number of response categories and response category labels

Author

Listed:
  • B. WEIJTERS

  • E. CABOOTER
  • N. SCHILLEWAERT
  • -

Abstract

Questionnaires using Likert-type rating scales are an important source of data in marketing research. Researchers use different rating scale formats with varying number of response categories and varying label formats (e.g., seven point rating scales labeled at the endpoints, fully labeled five point scales ), but have few guidelines when selecting a specific format. Drawing from the response style literature, we formulate hypotheses on the effect of the labeling of response categories and the number of response categories on net acquiescence response style, extreme response style and misresponse to reversed items. We test the hypotheses in an online survey (N=1207) with eight experimental conditions and a follow-up study with two experimental conditions (N = 226). We find evidence of strong effects of scale format on response distributions and misresponse to reversed items and formulate recommendations on scale format choice

Suggested Citation

  • B. Weijters & E. Cabooter & N. Schillewaert & -, 2010. "The effect of rating scale format on response styles: The number of response categories and response category labels," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 10/636, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    • Handle: RePEc:rug:rugwps:10/636
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wps-feb.ugent.be/Papers/wp_10_636.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rug:rugwps:10/636. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nathalie Verhaeghe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ferugbe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.