Misresponse to Reversed and Negated Items in Surveys: A Review
Abstract
There are important advantages to including reversed items in questionnaires (e.g., control of acquiescence, disruption of nonsubstantive responding, better coverage of the domain of content of a construct), but reversed items can also lead to measurement problems (e.g., low measure reliability, complex factor structures). The authors advocate the continued use of reversed items in measurement instruments but also argue that they should be used with caution. To help researchers improve their scale construction practices, the authors provide a comprehensive review of the literature on reversed and negated items and offer recommendations about their use in questionnaires. The theoretical discussion is supplemented with data on 1330 items from measurement scales that have appeared in Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of Consumer Research.
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The combination of 30 items with their respective 30 antonyms helps control for acquiescence bias.
“Moreover, the combination of 30 items with their respective 30 antonyms helps control for acquiescence bias.”
From Can ChatGPT be used to predict citation counts, readership, and social media interaction? An exploration among 2222 scientific abstracts (2024) · cites this paper as Weijters & Baumgartner, 2012
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References 40 · Cited by 421
- Authors
- Weijters, B., & Baumgartner, H.
- Affiliations
- Ghent University (BE)
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Weijters, Bert
- Baumgartner, Hans
- ORCID
- Weijters, Bert
- Venue
- Journal of Marketing Research
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2012-10
- Volume
- 49
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 737-747
- ISSN
- 0022-2437 (ISSN-L)
- 1547-7193
- OpenAlex
- W2171288877
- Cited by
- 421
- References
- 40
- Citations by year
- 2026: 67 · 2025: 54 · 2024: 51 · 2023: 39 · 2022: 38 · 2021: 50 · 2020: 30 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 8.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Marketing Research (publishedVersion)
- Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Psychometric Methodologies and Testing
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Survey Methodology and Nonresponse
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Survey Sampling and Estimation Techniques
- Keywords
- acquiescence, scale development, measurement reliability, factor structure, questionnaire design
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