Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-05T14:54:17.327Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Contextual Responses to Affirmative and/or Reversed-Worded Items

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Ulf Böckenholt
Ulf Böckenholt*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management
*
Correspondence should be made to Ulf Böckenholt, Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management, 2211 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. Email:[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic investigation of how affirmative and polar-opposite items presented either jointly or separately affect yea-saying tendencies. We measure these yea-saying tendencies with item response models that estimate a respondent’s tendency to give a “yea”-response that may be unrelated to the target trait. In a re-analysis of the Zhang et al. (PLoS ONE, 11:1–15, 2016) data, we find that yea-saying tendencies depend on whether items are presented as part of a scale that contains affirmative and/or polar-opposite items. Yea-saying tendencies are stronger for affirmative than for polar-opposite items. Moreover, presenting polar-opposite items together with affirmative items creates lower yea-saying tendencies for polar-opposite items than when presented in isolation. IRT models that do not account for these yea-saying effects arrive at a two-dimensional representation of the target trait. These findings demonstrate that the contextual information provided by an item scale can serve as a determinant of differential item functioning.

Keywords

affirmative and polar-opposite itemsyea-sayingacquiescenceresponse stylesdifferential item functioningability-based guessing model
Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 84 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 986 - 999
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 The Psychometric Society

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baumgartner, H.,Weijters, B.. &Pieters, R.. (2018). Misresponse to survey questions: A conceptual framework and empirical test of the effects of reversals, negations, and polar opposite core concepts. Journal of Marketing Research, 55 869– 883. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bentler, P. M.,Jackson, D. N., &Messick, S.. (1971). Identification of content and style: A two-dimensional interpretation of acquiescence. Psychological Bulletin, 76 186– 204. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bentler, P. M.,Jackson, D. N.. &Messick, S..(1972). A rose by any other name. Psychological Bulletin, 77 109– 113. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bock, R. D.. &Aitkin, M.. (1981). Marginal maximum likelihood estimation of item parameters: Application of an EM algorithm. Psychometrika, 46 443– 459. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Böckenholt, U.(2012). Modeling multiple response processes in judgment and choice. Psychological Methods, 17 665– 678. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Böckenholt, U.. (2017). Measuring response styles in Likert items. Psychological Methods, 22 69– 83. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Böckenholt, U. (2019). Assessing item-feature effects with item response tree models. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology. in press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cacioppo, J. T.,Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42 116– 131. 10.1037/0022-3514.42.1.116 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cacioppo, J. T..Petty, R. E.,Feinstein, JA..&Jarvis, WBG.. (1996). Dispositional differences in cognitive motivation: The life and times of individuals varying in need for cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 119 197– 253. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cacioppo, J. T.,Petty, R. E..&Kao, C. F.. (1984). The efficient assessment of need for cognition. Journal of Personality Assessment, 48 306– 307. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DiStefano, C.,Morgan, G. B..&Motl, RW.. (2012). An examination of personality characteristics related to acquiescence. Journal of Applied Measurement, 13 41– 56. 22677496 Google ScholarPubMed
Gill, P.,Murray, W..&Wright, M.(1981). Practical optimization, London: Academic Press. Google Scholar
Jeon, M.,De Boeck, P.(2016). A generalized item response tree model for psychological assessments. Behavior Research Methods, 48 1070– 1085. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kam, C.,Meyer, JP.(2012). Do optimism and pessimism have different relationships with personality dimensions? A re-examination. Personality and Individual Differences, 52 123– 127. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kam, C.C. S.,Fan, X.. (2019). Investigating response heterogeneity in the context of positively and negatively worded items by using factor mixture modeling. Organizational Research Methods, 22 1– 20. Google Scholar
Khorramdel, L.,von Davier, M.. (2014). Measuring response styles across the Big Five: A multiscale extension of an approach using multinomial processing trees. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 49 161– 177. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Knowles, E. S.,Condon, C. A.(1999). Why people say "yes": A dual-process theory of acquiescence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77 379– 386. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krosnick, J. A.(1991). Response strategies for coping with the cognitive demands of attitude measures in surveys. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 5 (3) 213– 236. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lubbe, D.,Schuster, C.(2019). A graded response model framework for questionnaires with uniform response formats. Applied Psychological Measurement, 43 290– 302. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marsh, H. W.. (1996). Positive and negative global self-esteem: A substantively meaningful distinction or artifactors?. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70 810– 819. 10.1037/0022-3514.70.4.810 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maydeu-Olivares, A.,Coffman, D. L.(2006). Random intercept item factor analysis. Psychological Methods, 11 344– 362. 10.1037/1082-989X.11.4.344 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCullagh, P.,Nelder, J.A.(1989). Generalized linear models, London: Chapman and Hall. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plieninger, H., & Heck, D. W.. (2018). A new model for acquiescence at the interface of psychometrics and cognitive psychology. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 53, 633–654.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plieninger, H., &Meiser, T.(2014). Validity of multiprocess IRT models for separating content and response styles. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 20 1– 25. Google Scholar
Rasch, G.. (1960). Probabilistic models for some intelligence and attainment tests, Copenhagen: Danish Institute for Educational Research. Google Scholar
Samejima, F.. van der Linden, W. J.. &Hambleton, R. K.(1997). Graded response model. Handbook of modern item response theory (pages, New York: Springer. 85– 100. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
San Martín, E..Pino, G d.. &DeBoeck, P.(2006). IRT models for ability-based guessing. Applied Psychological Measurement, 30 183– 203. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swain, SD..Weathers, D.. &Niedrich, RW.(2008). Assessing three sources of misresponse to reversed Likert items. Journal of Marketing Research, 45 116– 131. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tourangeau, R..Rips, LJ.. &Rasinski, K.(2000). The psychology of survey response, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weijters, B.. &Baumgartner, H.(2012). Misresponse to reversed and negated items in surveys: A review. Journal of Marketing Research, 49 737– 747. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weijters, B.,Baumgartner, H.. &Schillewaert, N.(2013). Reversed item bias: An integrative model. Psychological Methods, 18 320– 334. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zettler, I..Lang, J.W.B..Hülsheger, U. R.. &Hilbig, B. E.(2016). Dissociating indifferent, directional, and extreme responding in personality data: Applying the three-process model to self- and observer reports. Journal of Personality, 85 461– 472. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, X..Noor, R.. &Savalei, V.. (2016). Examining the effect of reverse worded items on the factor structure of the need for cognition scale. PLoS ONE, 11 1– 15. Google ScholarPubMed
Zuckerman, M..Knee, C. R.. &Hodgins, H. S..Miyake, K.. (1995). Hypothesis confirmation: The joint effect of positive test strategy and acquiescent response set. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68 52– 60. CrossRefGoogle Scholar